How Strong are Strong Ties? The Conditional Effectiveness of Strong Ties in Protest Recruitment Attempts

Abstract

Why do some individuals accept invitations to participate in protest events while others do not? Using the Citizen Participation Study, the author finds that targets invited by recruiters to whom they are strongly tied are more likely to protest than those invited by weak or absent ties. Such effect, however, is hypothesized to vary across the socioeconomic structure. Although strong ties motivate targets to accept the invitation, only those with sufficient resources could translate motivation into action. Consistent with this hypothesis, while strong ties roughly duplicate the chances of accepting a protest invitation when received by high socioeconomic status (SES) targets, the effectiveness of invitations disappears among low SES targets. This suggests that research about the effects of social networks on protest participation should consider how these networks are embedded in larger socioeconomic structures.