Mobilizing Resistance to Privatization: Communication Strategies of Salvadoran Health-Care Activists

In September 2002, unions representing public health-care employees in El Salvador – doctors, nurses, blue-collar workers, and clerical staff – began a strike that would last for over 9 months, in protest of government plans to privatize medical services in the Salvadoran Social Security Institute. This paper focuses on the methods that the unions and their allies used to communicate their policy arguments and the motivations for the strike to the Salvadoran public. Specifically, I examine the endogenous factors that shaped their communication strategy and the movement traits that enabled them to carry this out successfully. Coverage of the lengthy conflict by the country's two leading newspapers is examined in order to sketch a synopsis of counter-movement framing that the activists confronted. Interviews with movement leaders reveal that they relied primarily on direct, nonmediated communication channels to counteract the media's framing, and that the organizational diversity of the movement was an enormous advantage for these methods.     

Framed Encounters with Conservation and Mining Development: Indigenous Peoples' use of Strategic Framing in Suriname

While studies on the use of framing as a strategy for social movements have proliferated in the past 20 years, little is still known about how and why the frames vary across social movement actors and/or events. This article addresses this knowledge lacuna by comparing and contrasting Indigenous peoples' use of rights and identity frames in response to conservation and development events in Suriname. The variation in frames, and possible reasons for these variations, was compared across actors and events by considering (1) alignments of the global Indigenous rights movement with different movements and organizations over time, and (2) participants' level of involvement with national and global Indigenous rights movements. Evidence of strategic frame variation in this study demonstrated Indigenous peoples' ability to creatively and strategically pursue their interests by asserting their collective identity and rights in encounters with conservation and development projects. They accomplished this through the presentation of frames that called into question the logic and fairness of protected areas, their innate capacity to protect the environment, as well as their rights to land, and economic interests in mining. The greater use of rights frames by participants reflected networks generated with human rights organizations. Frame inconsistencies were apparent across conservation and development events that indicated uneven levels of involvement with Indigenous rights movements, which may yet produce unintended consequences for Indigenous communities. However, this case could also signal new possibilities for Indigenous peoples in terms of greater maneuverability in being able to assert their rights and negotiate their identities in relation to conservation and development, and ultimately to gain more power and autonomy over their own affairs.     

Framing Faith: Explaining Cooperation and Conflict in the US Conservative Christian Political Movement

Despite the burgeoning literature on coalition work, very little is known about the cooperative potential within social movements. Drawing on archival, interview, and secondary data, we examine cooperation and conflict in the US conservative Christian political movement from 1970 to 1994. We highlight how framing, political elites and intramovement dynamics within the conservative Christian political movement altered the cooperative potential over time. Specifically, we find that the conservative Christian political movement initially had a strong coordinative potential and even engaged in organization building as a way to formalize cross-denominational cooperation. However, as the evangelical wing of the movement sought to build and consolidate its political power, it began to frame issues in ways that reflected a particularized world view regarding the role of the state in fostering a moral society. Other conservative Christian organizations responded by couching their understanding of political issues in their own faith traditions, creating divisions within the movement and ultimately making cooperation impossible. Conceptually, this research broadens how we think about cooperation and points to the importance of specialization and political elites to cooperation within movements.     

A Christmas Tree in Flames and Other – Visual – Stories: Looking at the Photojournalistic Coverage of the Greek Protests of December 2008

In December 2008, the killing of a fifteen-year-old boy by the Greek police triggered the country's worst civil unrest in decades and an outbreak of rage and violence, which turned into a wider protest expressing deep popular discontent and frustration with ageing problems in the country. Through a content analysis of themes appearing in eight media of different genre and political orientation, and using solely images as units of analysis, this paper examines the visual framing of these protests and its function in the public screen. The findings show that two frames are used to imply a distinction between Us (as normal citizens who protest peacefully) and Them (as ‘hooded hooligans’ who protest violently).     

Between deliberation and contestation: the convergence of struggles against austerity and its world in the Nuit Debout movement

ABSTRACT

Nuit debout represents one of the main mobilizations in France in recent years and the most important anti-austerity movement in the country since the financial crisis. Based on document analysis and fieldwork, this paper addresses the development of master frames within the context of free spaces. The introduction of the parliamentarian debate on the French Jobs Act can be understood as a suddenly imposed grievance that triggered the emergence in France of a movement against austerity and the perceived retrenchment of democratic life. This happened as the grievance was framed within the French left-wing movements through the adoption and adaptation of ideas coming from a movement cascade that started in 2008 in Iceland, peaked in 2011 in Spain, Greece and the US and continued in countries as Turkey in 2013. Moving from structure to action, the paper highlights how Nuit debout provided a platform for the convergence of previously disconnected mobilizations. In particular, the movement’s self-characterization as a ‘convergence of struggles’ and as a movement ‘against the Jobs Act and its world’ developed within free spaces in which contentious but also deliberative practices were accommodated.     

China as janus: the framing of china by british columbia’s alternative public sphere

In recent years, Canada–China relations have drawn extensive public attention in Canada. To better understand this trend, this article examines the coverage of China in the “alternative public sphere” of British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province. Based on the qualitative critical discourse analysis of China-related online media generated by four alternative media and advocacy sources (the Tyee, the Dogwood Initiative, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Pembina Institute), we argue that China’s image within British Columbia’s alternative public sphere is characterized by the tension between two conflicting images. On one hand, China has been framed as a powerful, foreign entity that unduly influences Canada’s economic policies and decisions on energy infrastructure. On the other hand, China has been framed positively as a global leader in renewable energy and, increasingly, in global climate negotiations. Although both images of China were found in the data analysis, the negative image was significantly more prominent than the positive one.     

Guilty without trial: state-sponsored cheating and the 2008 Beijing Olympic women's gymnastics competition

One of the most widely covered news stories during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics involved several Chinese female gymnasts who had allegedly falsified their ages and were in fact ineligible for competition because they were underage. Using a news-framing analysis, this study examines how New York Times and Washington Post reporters framed the scandal. I argue that by employing the frames of state-sponsored cheating, assumed guilt, Western fair play and kowtowing, US journalists positioned the controversy as part of a larger ideological metaphor to represent China's refusal to adhere to Western standards, and to explain how this enables the nation to unfairly bypass the United States in the Olympics and in general as a world power. To rectify what they perceive to be a power imbalance, reporters craft a new narrative in which the Chinese gymnasts and, by extension, China itself, are not the victors in the contest for supremacy between East and West. In so doing, journalists evoke, support, and perpetuate the US' historical racialization of the Chinese as a slight, effeminate, deceitful people, thereby assigning these qualities to China as a nation and as a people. While journalists assuage US readers' fears of a future dominated by China, they close off avenues of understanding by positioning the US and China as enemies.     

Social media advocacy and gun violence: Applying the engagement model to nonprofit organizations’ communication efforts

Applying the model of engagement, this study tests the effectiveness of social media advocacy strategies, framing, and mobilizing information related to nonprofit organizations’ communication about the issue of gun violence. An online experiment revealed successful social media advocacy strategies within the engagement model. Two key components of social media advocacy were identified: (1) public relations practitioners’ roles in shaping messages and mobilizing publics; (2) the important role of marginalized groups and individuals in issue amplification.     

集成调节匹配对广告态度的影响

探讨受众的调节定向与信息框架的集成调节匹配对受众广告态度的影响以及集成调节匹配影响广告态度的边界条件.基于调节匹配效应和信息处理理论建立假设,通过两项以学生为被试的实验收集数据,采用方差分析方法进行假设检验.实验结果表明,集成调节匹配的广告较不匹配的广告更能塑造受众积极的广告态度,当广告侧重描述问题时,广告采用亏损框架宣传更能塑造受众积极的广告态度;当广告侧重描述问题解决时,广告采用得益框架宣传更能塑造受众积极的广告态度.实验1和实验2分别从受众情境性信息处理动机和特质性信息处理动机两方面发现,集成调节匹配对广告态度的影响作用产生的边界条件分别为受众高话题卷入度和高认知需求,即受众具有较高的信息处理动机.     

Dutch Women are Liberated, Migrant Women are a Problem: The Evolution of Policy Frames on Gender and Migration in the Netherlands, 1995–2005

Over the past decade, there has been a major shift in Dutch gender equality policy to an almost exclusive focus on migrant women. Simultaneously, the focus of ‘minority policies’ has shifted more and more towards gender relations. The appearance of migrant women at the top of the political agenda is remarkable. In this article we examine how this construction of migrant women as a political problem has come about, and consider its implications. As we argue, the dominant policy frames of emancipation and individual responsibility are reinforcing a dichotomy between the autochthonous ‘us’ and the allochthonous ‘them’. As the problem is increasingly defined as a cultural one, it is implicitly stated that there is no problem with the dominant culture and society. Barriers for participation are exclusively located in the migrant (Muslim) culture. In this view, Muslim migrants should first change their culture before they can fully integrate in Dutch society.