Frame Changes and Social Movement Contraction: U.S. Peace Movement Framing After the Cold War*

This study analyzes framing processes and their relationships with ongoing social movement change. We examine peace frames found among U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOS) in its period of contraction at the end of the Cold War. On the basis of analysis of a unique two-wave survey of US. peace movement organizations in 1988 and 1992, we assess the extent to which organizational framing of the peace problematic changed. We found an overall shift in emphases from more bilateral frames like the nuclear weapons freeze to frames emphasizing multilateralism and global interdependence. PMO frame transformations that took place between 1988 and 1992 represent a trend towards broader, more radical (or structural) and less exclusive peace movement frames. We describe the frame transformations observed here as the emergence of “retention frames.” Retention frames embody several dimensions of movement abeyance structures and serve to sustain organizational continuity across episodes of movement surges and contraction.     

OFFICIAL FRAMES IN SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY: The FBI, HUAC, and the Communist Threat in Hollywood

Social movement researchers acknowledge that frames promoted by state managers compete in intense framing contests with collective action frames promoted by social movement entrepeneurs. But they have not analyzed the construction and promotion of these "official frames.'The FBI framing of the communist threat in Hollywood during the 1940s is examined and the limits of the countersubversive anticommunist master frame are explored. State agencies are established as signifying agents, and the construction and promotion of official frames is compared to similar processes for collective action frames.     

Dissenting families and social movement abeyance: the transmission of neo-fascist frames in postwar Italy

What explains the re‐emergence of social movements after abeyance? Based on interviews with activists who belonged to the Italian neo‐fascist movement of the late 1960s to early 1980s, this article documents the preservation of a neo‐fascist mobilization potential after 1945 through the parent‐child transmission of frames. This process involved learning through talk, action and text. Both the nature of family frames and their congruence with movement frames depended on whether parents were right‐wing or non‐partisan. Research on abeyance should include the family among institutions that uphold continuity between waves of contention in pluralist regimes.     

GEEZERS,GREED, GRIEF,AND GRAMMAR: FRAME TRANSFORMATION IN THE NURSING HOME REFORM MOVEMENT

This study examines research on framing processes in the senior rights movement under the veil of social constructionism. It focuses on the emergence of the nursing home reform movement that led to the formation of the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform (NCCNHR) and the passing of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987. The research uses content analysis to examine data from six major U.S. newspapers to examine media images of the NCCNHR. Findings suggest that a frame transformation process has countered a recent period of abeyance in the nursing home reform movement. The analysis of media images of the NCCNHR contributes to social movement research examining framing processes and abeyance.     

Women’s mobilisation in the Portuguese revolution: context and framing strategies

This article examines the role of women’s mobilisations related to the 1974 Portuguese revolution. An in-depth analysis of three women’s organisations through archival research and interviews with participants highlights the ways in which they participated in a cycle of contention between 1974 and 1977. Examination of framing strategies demonstrates the effects of political and cultural context. In particular, I demonstrate that movement–party alliances informed and constrained the diagnostic and prognostic frames of women’s movements on feminism and the revolution. Opportunity structures are shown to vary for different organisations within the same cycle of contention. Facing relatively closed opportunities, two of these organisations pursued framing strategies that articulated with the Left-dominated master frame of the cycle in order to carve out spaces for gender-specific demands while rejecting the label of feminism. The third organisation, instead, presented a countercultural frame that alienated the organisation from party and movement allies. Unable to overcome ideological divisions and rivalries, the three organisations perceived each other as competitors, rather than potential allies. While party–movement cooperation contributed to the emergence of a fractionalised women’s movement, it also provided important support structures to aid women’s organisations to mobilise in a cultural and political context that was closed to feminist demands.     

MASTER FRAMES, POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES, AND SELF-DETERMINATION:c The Åland Islands in the Post-WWI Period

While the literature on master frames has drawn attention to the crucial role of ideas in cycles of protest, reliance on the creation of frame resonance to account for the success or failure of a social movement within a cycle can be problematic. Applying propositions adapted from McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald (1996), this article traces how political opportunities interacted with framing processes during the emergence and development of the Åland Islands secessionist movement of the post-WWI period. The Ålanders aligned their claims with early representations of the "selfdetermination master frame" that underlay the cycle of protest that emerged after the war in a way that resonated with the Allied leaders adjudicating their case. Shifts in political conditions, however, helped to foster an intense "framing contest" among contenders that in the end undermined the Ålanders' representation of the master frame and their ability to achieve desired ends. Although the case reveals certain shortcomings in the propositions, they nevertheless provide a useful starting point when documenting the complex interplay of political conditions and framing processes in an instance of collective action.     

‘I Hate It,But It Still Sounds Good’: Collective Identity and the Evaluation of Oppositional Frame Resonance

While activists often respond to claims advanced by their opposition, little is known about how oppositional rhetoric is evaluated. This study focuses on the evaluation process, examining how movement actors assess the resonant appeal of oppositional frames. I analyze how activists in the American pro-choice movement respond to a faction of the pro-life movement that primarily frames abortion as harmful to women. Drawing on focus group conversations with pro-choice activists, I find feminist collective identity and their own experience advancing gendered frames influence which oppositional frames pro-choice actors consider most likely to resonate with a non-activist audience. These judgments subsequently guide decisions about how to respond to oppositional frames and construct of counterframes. I find activists to use collective identity to rule out potential strategies and tactics they feel are in conflict with what the group represents. I argue that in cases where similarities exist between frames and counterframes, experience advancing rhetoric superficially similar to that of the opposing movement provides strategic insight. Movement actors draw on lessons learned from their own collective framing experiences to evaluate how audiences will respond to oppositional frames with comparable cultural themes. These experiences serve as a guide, informing activists' perceptions of the frames a non-activist audience will be most likely to embrace, which frames must be addressed, and which can be safely ignored. This study emphasizes movement actors' agency and strategic decision-making processes, demonstrates how collective identity influences the framing process, and contributes to knowledge of how group experiences and identity affect perception and strategy.     

Telling Our Stories: Narrative and Framing in the Movement for Same-Sex Marriage

Although framing and narrative are both well-documented discursive features of social movements, the difference between them is often overstated; where frames are treated as logical, authoritative, and abstract, the usefulness of narratives is frequently documented in relation to pre-mobilization phases of movement development such as identity and community building. Drawing on an analysis of Connecticut's Judiciary Committee hearings on same-sex marriage, I challenge this distinction and elucidate the relationship between storytelling and framing, showing how narrative is used to make packages of frames cohesive and compelling. In demonstrating how proponents of the legislation deployed narratives and frames simultaneously, this research contributes to scholarship on the function and configuration of discursive strategies for social movements.     

MASTER FRAMING AND CROSS-MOVEMENT NETWORKING IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

This article maps the network of cross-movement activism in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, and explores the relationship between position in the network and cognitive use of different injustice frames. The study is informed by a neo-Gramscian analysis that views social movements as (potential) agencies of counterhegemony. Viewed as a political project of mobilizing broad, diverse opposition to entrenched economic, political, and cultural power, counterhegemony entails a tendential movement toward comprehensive critiques of domination and toward comprehensive networks of activism. We find that the use of a broadly resonant master frame—the political-economy account of injustice —is associated with the practice of cross-movement activism. Activists whose social movement organization (SMO) memberships put them in touch with activists from other movements tend to frame injustice as materially grounded, structural, and susceptible to transformation through concerted collective action. Moreover, the movements in which political-economy framing especially predominates–labor, peace, feminism, and the urban/antipoverty sector—tend not only to supply most of the cross-movement ties but to be tied to each other as well, suggesting that a political-economy framing of injustice provides a common language in which activists from different movements can communicate and perhaps find common ground.     

Contemporary British Feminism: A social movement in abeyance?

This paper addresses the issue of social movement abeyance in relation to contemporary British feminism. It argues that currently British feminism is a social movement in abeyance that is not actively confronting the social system, and is largely preoccupied with maintaining itself through service providing voluntary organizations, educational and intellectual activities and incorporation into elite politics. The analysis of abeyance is also developed at the conceptual level by adding further detail to how we might theorize abeyance by contrasting it with the insurgent phase of social movement activity.     

Reconceptualizing Social Movement Abeyance: The Role of Internal Processes and Culture in Cycles of Movement Abeyance and Resurgence

Abstract

Questions of social movement emergence and decline have long been of interest to social movement analysts, but discussions related to social movement endurance are relatively new to the field. In this work, we explicitly adapt Verta Taylor's concept of abeyance to a local grassroots social movement organization (SMO), Solutions to Issues of Concern to Knoxvillians (SICK), that has endured for 18 years and achieved success in multiple campaign issues. Arguing that an unfavorable external political climate is not the only reason for an SMO to decline in mass membership and mass-based challenges, we use the concept of abeyance to explain the SMO's continuity as a product of internal SMO processes and organizational culture. Our findings indicate that the grassroots organization emerged, won considerable victories, and then continued to survive rather than disbanding. The SMO subsequently underwent two cycles of abeyance-and-resurgence, which we assess using Taylor's set of five characteristics of movement abeyance structures. We conclude that some of the abeyance structures are applicable to a grassroots movement while others are not.     

Framing Public Discussion of Gay Civil Unions

Although the framing of public opinion has often been conceptualizedas a collective and social process, experimental studies offraming have typically examined only individual, psychologicalresponses to alternative message frames. In this research weemploy for the first time group conversations as the unit ofanalysis (following Gamson 1992) in an experimental study offraming effects. Two hundred and thirty-five American citizensin 50 groups (17 homo-geneously conservative groups, 15 homogeneouslyliberal groups, and 18 heterogeneous groups) discussed whetheror not gay and lesbian partnerships should be legally recognized.Groups were randomly assigned to one of two framing conditions(a "homosexual marriage/special rights" frame or a "civil union/equalrights" frame). Results indicated framing effects that were,in all cases, contingent on the ideological leanings of thegroup. The "marriage" frame tended to polarize group discussionsalong ideological lines. Both liberal and conservative groupsappeared to find their opponents’ frame more provocative,responding to them with a larger number of statements and expressinggreater ambivalence than when reacting to more hospitable frames.     

Populism as a Collective Action Master Frame for Transnational Mobilization

Occupy Wall Street, the Greek and Spanish indignados , and other important movements swept across the Western world from 2011 onward, redefining political and social conflict during the global economic meltdown of the Great Recession. These movements have earned well‐deserved academic attention, but the resulting scholarship is lacking a crucial pillar: a comparative analysis of the collective action frames employed by movement entrepreneurs. To identify the master frame at work and uncover shared processes of strategic meaning making and collective identity construction during this transnational cycle of contention, I analyze primary data, exploring diagnostic, prognostic, and adversarial framing elements as found in the movements’ widely circulated manifestos. The populist frame emerges as the master frame of the cycle, encapsulating the adversarial discourse of the dominant dichotomy of a noble “people” and a corrupt “elite” that resonated strongly with mobilized individuals and allowed movement entrepreneurs to construct a transnationally shared collective identity across populations of widely diverging social, political, and economic backgrounds.     

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE IRISH QUESTION:

This article builds on theoretical work in the social movements literature that uses "master frames" (Snow and Benford 1992) to account for the cyclical clustering of social movement activity within certain historical periods. I identify "master frame alignment" as the dynamic process by which social movement actors rhetorically transform the master frames within a cycle of protest to make them resonate more clearly with a movement's unique social and historical situation. Just as frame alignment processes serve to link a movement organization's activities, goals, and ideology with those of a potential group of adherents, master frame alignment processes link the activities, goals, and ideology of a movement organization with those espoused within the broader symbolic atmosphere of the social movement. I present historical data from Irish newspapers and political documents to show how the Irish Sinn Féin movement, seeking self-determination during the early twentieth century, rhetorically reconstructed the master frames generated by the League of Nations in order to better exploit this particular window of political opportunity.     

PEACENIKS AND WARMONGERS' FRAMING FRACAS ON THE HOME FRONT:

Research on collective action framing has tended to focus on inter- and intramovement interpretation of grievances, often assuming that hegemonic frames are taken for granted. The Persian Gulf conflict of 1990–1991 offers an empirical opportunity to extend the theoretical boundaries of social movement framing by incorporating, and identifying, the active framing strategies of dominant actors. From this vantage point, we can begin to see in what ways both dominant and oppositional discourses (and policy) are aided and constrained.     

"NO WEAPON SAVE ARGUMENT":

US. woman suffragists routinely utilized two types of arguments in their demands for voting rights: justice and reform. The former argument held that women should vote because they were men's equals and therefore should have political rights equal to those of men. Reform arguments stated that women should have the ballot because women, given their unique womanly experiences and perspectives, would bring a unique contribution to politics, making society a more humane place. Although social movement scholars have increasingly studied the framing work of movement activists, few systematic studies of framing activity exist. In this work we examine the circumstances that led the suffragists to amplify one or the other of these motivational frames. We find that the suffragists were quite strategic in their choice of frames, targeting particular audiences and taking advantage of cultural opportunities for frame resonance. We find only limited evidence that their frames were driven by the collective identity of particular groups in the movement.     

Rebel colours: 'framing' in global social movements

This paper presents data gathered during and since the protests against the IMF and World Bank meetings in Prague in September 2000. It describes the interactional and deliberative processes that were undertaken by activists involved in framing the protests and the manifestation of this ‘frame‐work’ in three separate marches denoted by different colours, which took place on September 26^th during a ‘global day of action’. The paper utilises ethnographic detail to develop a critically engaged model of social movement frame analysis that focuses upon the genesis of these ‘action frames’, including the elaborate negotiation of conflicting ideological and tactical dispositions that lay behind them, and the variety of democratic decision making forums which were instrumental in their design.     

The Microlevel Discourse of Social Movement Framing: Debating Antiwar Protests on a University Listserv

Abstract

Over the past two decades, researchers have increasingly employed frame analysis in attempts to understand the genesis, development, and outcomes of social movements. Relatively little attention, however, has focused on the microlevel processes involved in generating social movement frames. This paper is an effort to link theories of social movement framing with the methodology of discourse analysis. In the following, an online debate over the legitimacy of protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States provides qualitative data for a discourse analysis of microlevel framing processes. The debate occurred on a university listserv and involved more than 100 messages offered by 67 individuals over 16 days. Analyses reveal four distinct framing contests in the discourse. An initiating contest regarding a specific antiwar protest is found to generate three additional contests, the first about antiwar protests more generally, the second about the war in Iraq itself, and the third about the appropriateness of holding such a debate on a listserv sent to university employees. A framing process schema is offered to represent conflict between social movement and countermovement participants across the discourse.     

CORPORATE FRAME FAILURE AND THE EROSION OF ELITE LEGITIMACY

Extant research on official frames centers on state campaigns, yet nonstate entities also utilize their own official frames. We extend the existing social movement literature by examining the unsuccessful framing efforts of a uranium mill in Cañon City, Colorado. Despite a history of environmental contamination and resultant health problems, the corporation deployed an official frame to reestablish the company's legitimacy and justify their actions following the controversy. Our data included newspaper coverage, archival documents, in‐depth interviews, and direct observation. Findings highlight critical factors that can undermine corporate official frames, and show that failed framing efforts can ultimately erode elite legitimacy.     

Religion, Religiosity, and Nonmarital Sexual Conduct: An Application of Reference Group Theory

Using the framing process of "partial-birth" abortion (PBA) as an exemplifying case, this paper proposes a dialogic model of framing in which meaning is created and recreated through an iterative, discursive process. Materials developed by six social movement organizations that lead the PBA framing process were analyzed to chronicle the evolution of the PBA frame, as well as factors that influenced this evolution. Movement and countermovement actors attempted to imbue PBA with meaning in such a manner as to motivate and direct action to support their overarching political goals. Rather than two distinct parallel frames battling against each other, this process is better conceptualized as the evolution of a single frame, created in interaction with the framing of one's opponents. A dialectic model of framing provides a framework for examining the process by which cultural meanings are contested and how these meanings are transformed through collective action. Such a model also potentially expands the definition of successful frame and better illuminates the symbiotic relationship between movements and countermovements actors.