Action Frames Research Articles

Constructing complexity: collective action framing and rise of obesity research

Obesity has been at the forefront of the public health agenda in the United States since the late 1990s. Commonly considered a simple condition of excess for most of the 20th century, I argue that in order for scientific inquiry into obesity to be considered legitimate, an important transformation was required: obesity needed to be reconstructed as a complex condition, in need of multidisciplinary collaboration and significant, sustained research investment. Drawing on document analysis, in-depth interviews with obesity researchers, and ethnographic observation, in this article I show how the frame of complexity has been instrumental for obesity researchers carving out a legitimate area of scientific inquiry. I trace how complexity has been mobilized over the past 60 years, first during infrastructure building activities that occurred beginning in the early 1970s, as well as field expansion activities that institutionalized the frame during the 1990s and 2000s. While the complexity frame has largely been successful in attracting sustained investment in biomedical and public health research on obesity, it has differentially benefited researchers and those impacted by obesity.

Conflict narratives, action frames, and engagement in reconciliation efforts among community activists in Northern Ireland.

Conflict narratives, action frames, and engagement in reconciliation efforts among community activists in Northern Ireland.

Fostering the Quality of Care for People with Chronic Diseases, from Theory to Practice: The Development of Good Practices in Disease Prevention and Care in JA CHRODIS PLUS Using JA CHRODIS Recommendations and Quality Criteria.

In the frame of joint action in chronic diseases (JA CHRODIS), an extensive process at the European Union level was carried out to identify a core set of quality criteria and to formulate recommendations that improved prevention, early detection, and quality of care for people with chronic diseases. Diabetes was used as a model disease. The core set of quality criteria may be applied to develop and improve practices, programs, strategies, and policies in various domains (e.g., prevention, care, health promotion, education, and training). The quality criteria are general enough to be applied in countries with different political, administrative, social, and health care organizations. Moreover, they can be applied to a number of other chronic diseases. JA CHRODIS recommendations and quality criteria are being tested in a series of pilot actions within the JA CHRODIS PLUS. A total of 15 partners representing nine European countries worked together to implement pilot actions and generate practical lessons that could contribute to the further uptake and use of JA CHRODIS recommendations. Special emphasis is given to meaningful patient involvement in co-designing the pilot actions and to the sustainability and scalability of the pilot actions. These insights were found to be at the core of the learning from pilot actions to foster high quality care for people with chronic diseases.

Land grabs, farmworkers, and rural livelihoods in West Africa: some silences in the food sovereignty discourse

ABSTRACT The global land rush has spurred small, modest, and big anti-land grab mobilizations, notably the food sovereignty movement. The movement has been instrumental in representing the interests of small-scale family farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by capitalist control over land in the countryside. However, this dominant narrative tends to overlook or de-emphasize some important diversity within the peasantry. In West Africa, anti-land grab discourses emphasize family farming as a major collective action frame, focusing less on issues related to agricultural wage labour – farmworkers’ access to land, food, and decent working conditions. If food sovereignty is to fully realize its potential power as a counter-narrative to neoliberalism, and as a possible democratic alternative for working people with differentiated and at times competing socio-economic interests, then demands that adequately reflect the agrarian struggles of the rural working people have to be put onto the agenda and engaged better than it is now.

Explaining the Crisis of the Green Movement in Iran (2009-2017)

ABSTRACTThe Green Movement has been the most significant challenge the Islamic Republic of Iran has confronted since the 1979 Revolution. Despite an initial flourishing, the Green Movement gradually declined and was unable to achieve its goals. It was finally forced to play in the framework of the existing order. The present study explains the reasons for which the Green Movement declined and also attempts to determine which factors affected the regression and subsequent evolution of the movement and how. Social movement failure remains a largely understudied topic, and the literature on movement emergence is much more sophisticated than the literature on movement decline. The same is true about the Green movement of Iran. To answer the raised questions, the author uses social movement theory and examines the role of political opportunities, framing, mobilizing structures and repertoires of collective action in the decline and subsequent evolution of the movement. The findings illustrate how the loss of political opportunity played a decisive role in the decline and further evolution of the movement and severely affected the movement’s mobilizing structures while indirectly affecting its framing and repertoire of collective action. The inappropriate and ambiguous framing of the movement by its leaders along with a lack of strategy to address the existing challenges, the general haphazardness and the inability to adopt efficient collective actions undermined the movement and accelerated its failure.

Tokenism Revisited: When Organizational Culture Challenges Masculine Norms, the Experience of Token Is Transformed

Extant research on tokenism has documented the adverse consequences for employees in minority positions and how women's possibility of action is constrained in male‐dominated contexts. We present an in‐depth qualitative case study of a male‐dominated organization in a masculine industry in which, despite all expectations, the experience of tokenism for minority women is ambiguous. Furthermore, these women also display a strong agentic role in an organization in which culture favours gender equality. This case reveals an aspect previously overlooked in studies of tokenism: the importance of organizational culture. By exposing and challenging the implicit masculine norm through its organizational culture, this organization actively engages in the change of gendering processes and contributes to establishing an alternative norm. Theoretical contributions show the impact of normative control on the experience of tokens, and how it provides a frame for action toward gender equality.

From resistance to ‘bricolage’: Forms of ‘power to’ get active and create possibilities in multilingual organizations

This article investigates the underaddressed productive power effects of multilingualism in professional contexts. Instead of conceiving of power in terms of possession, competition or limitation, it focuses on ‘power to’ get active, seize opportunities, create possibilities, take responsibility, make decisions, and relate to others. Re-analyzing data from a case study conducted in Switzerland, it shows how employees discursively construct various forms of getting active and creating possibilities to counterbalance the challenging aspects of their multilingual work environment. As a result, it presents a typology of agency creation in multilingual organizations. Agency is conceptualized as breaking away from a given frame of action and as taking initiatives to transform it.

COMMUNITY ACCEPTABILITY TO THE SALAFI MOVEMENT

The study of Salafi is generally focused on the perspective of social movements with the political opportunity structure, resources theory, and collective action frames. The three approaches to social movement theory lead to the same estuary, which is an analysis of emerging factors and the development of a social movement. Unlike the previous studies, this article focuses on the acceptance of the Islamic community's acceptability patterns to the Salafi movement. The interesting phenomenon of this movement is the so massive infiltration occurring. The community is so rapidly accepting the style and the system of sustainability offered by various Salafi groups. This article uses a sociological approach to the basis of structural-functional and interactionist-symbolic theories of experience in both the individual and collective levels of the followers of Salafi. Methods of collecting data through interviews, observations, and documentation with the research subject of 30 members of the Salafi group are not grass-root. The results showed that structuralist-functionally, the phenomenon of public acceptability due to the currents of modernity, shifting the concept of the family, shifting the meaning of religious authorities, and ease of access to information technology. Symbolically-symbolic, the phenomenon is the result of individual interaction with the social environment and the search for alternative religious identity.
 Keywords: Salafi, Movemnt, and Islam

Management Responses to Online Reviews: Consumer Preferences of Action Frames and Language Style

This study was taken as the understanding of management responses remains scarcely understood in theory and practice, especially concerning consumer preferences. This study aims at examining consumer preferences of the action frames and language styles adopted in hotel management responses to online reviews. A multi-method approach, using discrete choice experiments followed by in-depth interviews, was employed. Findings show that past action frames in management responses are preferred by customers due to the certainty, trustworthiness and detailed information provided. Moreover, literal is favoured over figurative language style due to perceived professionalism and conciseness. The current study helps hotel management to further understand consumer preferences of management responses to online reviews, especially regarding action frames and language styles.

A Hypothesis of Circulating MicroRNAs' Implication in High Incidence of Atrial Fibrillation and Other Electrocardiographic Abnormalities in Cancer Patients.

MicroRNAs are short non-coding RNA molecules that control posttranscriptional gene expression and are present in tissues cells but also circulate in biological fluids in various forms (exosome, connected with proteins, apoptotic bodies, etc.). The roles that circulated extracellular serum microRNAs possess in cancer development, like in the delivery from a recipient cell to distant tissues and the repression of host genes resulting in the impairment of critical functions, are still undetermined. Disturbances, such as the higher incidence of atrial fibrillation in cancer patients, could be analyzed in the frame of suppressive action of circulated microRNAs in genes that control cardiac conduction in atrium. More precisely, mir-21 overexpression in tissues promotes atrium fibrosis and impairs conductibility. A possible hypothesis is that the high levels of circulating microRNA in cancer may exert the same effect. Further experiments are necessary to corroborate the hypothesis.

5. Toward an Ethics of Opacity in Higher Education Internationalization

<?page nr="91"?>Abstract This conceptual essay employs the intersecting lenses of critical university studies (CUS) and decolonial theory to make a critical intervention into the terrain of ethics in higher education internationalization. It is argued that a combined framework of ideas from CUS and decolonial theory will bring a sharper social justice and decolonizing edge to debates on how to disrupt dominant ethical frames of action in higher education internationalization. In particular, the author develops Corey Walker’s (2011) notion of the “ethics of opacity” as an approach that interrogates the logics of neoliberalism and coloniality/modernity in internationalization practices and policies of higher education. It is suggested that the ethics of opacity provides ethical and political recognition to the opaque sites and repressed knowledges of marginalized and colonized peoples. The paper discusses the implications of the ethics of opacity for a renewed agenda in internationalization practices and policies of higher education.

Reframing Air Pollution as a Public Health Crisis in California’s San Joaquin Valley

This article examines how clean air advocates in the San Joaquin Valley amplified a collective action frame of air pollution as a public health crisis. This frame serves to mobilize communities and attribute responsibility to relevant authorities while countering the San Joaquin Valley Air District’s narrative that places blame on the public and unalterable aspects of the physical environment, characterizing the problem as largely unchangeable. Core questions are: How did advocates facilitate frame construction and sustain resonance across time and place? How did this frame compel urgent action, including representational change in the Valley Air District Governing Board through the adoption of Senate Bill 719? Findings show that advocates counter the San Joaquin Valley Air District’s frame by shifting the focus on the negative impacts to public health and quality of life, particularly in disproportionately impacted environmental justice communities. Building and leveraging a resonant frame required strategic “stretch” in capacity while cultivating collective identity and solidarity. Within the Valley Air District, the change in governing board composition has measurably impacted dialog and provided a more welcoming reception of public participation at meetings, with the doctor and scientist appointees providing critical perspectives and contributing to subtle shifts in the agency’s dominant messaging and decision making. While a public health frame has taken shape around air pollution in the San Joaquin Valley, these efforts are not complete or without ongoing strain.

Journeying Together: Aligning Retailer and Service Provider Roles with Collective Consumer Practices

Consumer journeys offers a powerful metaphor that has inspired diverse strategic frameworks to aid retailers in managing and designing customer experiences. Absent from existing frameworks, however, is a clear understanding of the journeys consumers perform as a collective that is bound by a shared identity and communal goals. Yet, whether taking vacations, going out to dinner, facing a health crisis, or setting up a household, much of consumers’ lives are spent journeying together. With families as our focal collective, we adopt a social practice theory lens and integrate prior consumer research related to collective practice dynamics (identity goal interplay, connectedness, and corporeality) to articulate what retailers should consider when designing collective journeys. Using this theoretical foundation, we build a conceptual framework that identifies three roles retailers play in collective journeys: central, mediated, and dispersed. We differentiate each role by the core value retailers provide to consumer practices as well as the collective dynamic challenges implicated. Our framework highlights the need for retailers to structure their offerings to match the dynamics of families’ collective journeys. To explore this matching process more fully, we introduce the idea of ‘fields of alignment’ as the social spaces where retailers and consumers actively negotiate, improvise, and experiment to align around common frames for action. We use the concept of fields of alignment to generate implications for retailers, propose guidelines for managerial action, and present avenues for future research.

Türkiye’de Kadına Karşı Şiddetin Sembolik ve Doğrudan Biçimleri: Namus Olgusu ve Namus Cinayetleri

Gündelik yaşamda bir grubun diğerine kurduğu tahakkümün korunmasını sağlayan görünmez şiddet, yapısal, sembolik ya da normalleşmiş şiddet gibi çeşitli süreçler vardır. Pierre Bourdieu da güç ve tahakküm analizinden ve bunların modern toplumlarda toplumsal olarak yeniden üretilmesinden yola çıkarak, sembolik iktidar ve şiddet kavramını ortaya atmıştır. Sembolik iktidar, zihinlere dünya ve toplum düzeni tasavvurunun ve ırka, dine, etnik kökene veya cinsiyete dayalı toplumsal bölünmelerin meşru ve doğal olduğunu empoze etme gücüdür. Sembolik şiddet de toplumsal dünyamızı toplumun bütün üyeleri tarafından paylaşılan meşru ve “doğal” olarak varsaydığımız algı, düşünce ve eylem çerçevelerimiz olan bilişsel yapılar yoluyla gerçekleştirilir. Böylece sembolik şiddet, aynı zamanda biliş ve tanıma eylemleri olan tüm tahakküm ve boyun eğdirme eylemlerini ve hiyerarşileri kapsar. Kadının tahakküm altına alınması, ataerkil bir toplum ve devlet düzenin kurulmasıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Doğrudan şiddete başvurmadan, toplumsal dünya ilişkin kodlamaların eğitim sistemi ve din gibi ortak algı çerçeveleri üzerinden kadına yönelik sembolik şiddet, sembolik eril iktidarın ve tahakkümün korunmasında etkin rol üstlendiği görülmektedir. Bu makalede ataerkil düzenin dayandığı sembolik iktidarın kadının cinsel denetimini normalleştiren bir sembolik şiddet biçimi olarak namus olgusunun antropolojik ve sosyolojik gelişimi ile namusa dayalı bir doğrudan şiddet biçimi olan namus cinayetleri, Türkiye bağlamında incelenmiştir.

«РУХ»: ХРЕЩЕНИЙ БАТЬКО

The work offers joint cognitive semantic and interdiscursive approach to the religious phenomenon of baptism, particularly the prime participant of situation of baptism – godfather. The lexical unit godfather is a core of investigation according to its unique and original genesis regarding its meanings within the situation of baptism, post-baptism period, and its application in other spheres of human activity. The unit evokes structures relating to BAPTISM gestalt, the cognitive area uniting information on baptism ritual, its pre, and post stages. The latter is analyzed regarding its cognitive and situational representation through sequential frame, semantic, and definitive analysis in terms of onomasiological and semasiological interpretations. The action frame structure is selected as a “container” of organized information about events, participants, and the actions connected with situation of baptism in general and godfather in particular. The issue of opposite “motions” of meanings is translated through cognitive images of nominative unit godfather and is researched with respect to the unit's cognitive structures evoked by its inderdiscursive objectivations. The scientific platform ScienceDirect and the mass-media (cinematography) are viewed as the potential sources of overlapping discourses and are regarded as valuable interdiscursive spaces, which include various crystallizations developed by investigated nominative unit. The “motions” of godfather lexical unit are verbalized via interdiscursive explications of its meanings and are interpreted through action frame structural images. The paper includes the discussion of opposed direction “motions” demonstrated by interdiscursive crystallizations of meanings the nominative unit godfather actualizes. The investigated meanings in their turn are analyzed in terms of cognitive images constructing new situations evoked by them. Additionally, the investigation outlines the presumable linguistic and extra linguistic factors influencing the opposed “motion” processes declared. The notion of ”hollywoodization” is mentioned as one having direct impact on the “motion” revealed.

Algorithmic Analysis of Chemical Dynamics of the Autoignition of NH3–H2O2/Air Mixtures

The dynamics of a homogeneous adiabatic autoignition of an ammonia/air mixture at constant volume was studied, using the algorithmic tools of Computational Singular Perturbation. Since ammonia combustion is characterized by both unrealistically long ignition delays and elevated NO x emissions, the time frame of action of the modes that are responsible for ignition was analyzed by calculating the developing time scales throughout the process and by studying their possible relation to NO x emissions. The reactions that support or oppose the explosive time scale were identified, along with the variables that are related the most to the dynamics that drive the system to an explosion. It is shown that reaction H 2 O 2 (+M) → OH + OH (+M) is the one contributing the most to the time scale that characterizes ignition and that its reactant H 2 O 2 is the species related the most to this time scale. These findings suggested that addition of H 2 O 2 in the initial mixture will influence strongly the evolution of the process. It was shown that ignition of pure ammonia advanced as a slow thermal explosion with very limited chemical runaway. The ignition delay could be reduced by more than two orders of magnitude through H 2 O 2 addition, which causes only a minor increase in NO x emissions.

Talking About Youth: The Depoliticization of Young People in the Public Domain

In this article, we employ data from comparative claims analysis of five major newspapers in nine European countries between 2010 and 2016 to examine discourse around youth. We look at the ways in which collective actors frame youth in the public domain and how this may provide discursive opportunities understood in terms of the extent to which public discourse portrays young people as agents of social change. More specifically, we argue that young people are depoliticized in the public domain. We find that public statements and more generally public discourse about youth tend to depict them as actors who do not have political aims or to focus on other, nonpolitical characteristics. Our exploratory analysis shows that, while youth are fairly present as actors in the public domain, they are only rarely addressed or discussed in political terms. Moreover, where they are addressed politically, it is in negative terms, with few political claims. At the same time, we observe important cross-national variations, whereby the depoliticization process looks to be further matured in some countries relative to others. This process of depoliticization of youth in the public domain, in turn, has important implications on their potential for acting as political agents and for their political activism.

Enemies at the Gateway: Regional Populist Discourse and the Fight Against Oil Pipelines on Canada's West Coast

This paper explores discursive strategies of opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker project – a proposal to link Alberta oil sands producers to international markets via Canada’s West Coast. It explores how regional concerns about Northern Gateway helped galvanize a movement led by regional First Nations, environmentalists, and settler communities, all of whom opposed Gateway as a means to protect regional ecosystems – and the local communities dependent on them – from “extra-regional” Gateway-backing elites. By articulating arguments against Northern Gateway with salient collective action frames concerning ecological sustainability, regional identity, Indigenous sovereignty, social justice, and democratic agency, this anti-Gateway ‘discourse coalition’ helped contribute to the project’s ultimate collapse in 2016. In this paper, we critically engage with Ernesto Laclau’s theorization of populism to analyse this movement as a form of “regional ecological populism”, explaining how a shift in spatial framing from the national to the regional enabled a particular variant of populist discourse to emerge. Furthermore, we relate Laclau’s framework to Hajer’s concept of discursive “storylines” and Gamson’s analysis of “collective action frames” to pivot away from Laclau’s focus on the ontological construction of unified popular subjects to a more grounded analysis of how coalitions articulate populist storylines designed to mobilize diverse movement constituents. In doing so, we draw on a frame analysis of communications materials produced by several prominent First Nations and environmental organizations publicly mobilizing against Northern Gateway between 2010 and 2015, tracing how these groups came to articulate a common regional ecological populist storyline. Finally, we end with some thoughts about the possibilities and challenges for scaling up regional ecological populism in Canada.

Institutions Building in the Contemporary World: The Case of Funding Mechanism and Policies in UNFCCC Negotiations

This paper focuses on policies with regard to climate finance and how the evolution of the Financial Mechanism occurred. It employs the framing theory to illustrate how the issues related to climate finance had been framed up at the negotiation table and why a new operating entity embodying distinct policies emerged. The theory is widely used in the field of communication research, but, to date, has been rarely applied to the multilateral negotiation process. Applying the theory, this paper conducts a content and frame analysis, develops a historic map, and traces the process of the evolution of the frames. It identifies a process of frame generation through the contested rhetoric framing of the actors in line with their primary logics. The primary logics are shaped by the mental schemata of the actors. The generated frames, termed here ‘action frames’, again went through the similar process until reaching the agreement and yielding new institutional norms. The work develops a distinct framework to conceive such complex processes structurally. It has the potential to serve as an example to explain, similar cases systematically with regard to the global collective commons.

A ‘career shift’? Bounded agency in migrant employment pathways in the aged care and early childhood education and care sectors in Australia

ABSTRACT Unlike many countries in Europe and North America, Australia does not directly recruit migrants to work in frontline aged care and early childhood education and care (ECEC). However, employment data shows that a large proportion of people working in these two care sectors are migrants. Little is known about how migrants make their way into the ECEC and aged care sectors in Australia. Drawing on qualitative interviews with migrants working in three cities, this paper explores the pathways of migrants into care work in Australia. It uses the concept of bounded agency to illustrate how migrants articulate agency within constrained employment opportunities. It finds that participants experience a heavily constrained sense of agency upon arrival in Australia due to lack of skills recognition and English language proficiency. Our data shows that, over time, participants mobilise existing resources – and acquire new ones – to develop new frames for action that culminate in what they describe as a ‘career shift’ into employment in formal care settings. Our data sheds new light on the way in which migrant care workers, through this process, are able to negotiate a sense of agency and pursue employment preferences, within a context of constraint.