Social Movement Industry Research Articles

Beyond the eye-catchers: A large-scale study of social movement organizations’ involvement in online protests

Existing studies of social movement organizations (SMOs) commonly focus only on a small number of well-known SMOs or SMOs that belong to a single social movement industry (SMI). This is partially because current methods for identifying SMOs are labor-intensive. In contrast to these manual approaches, in our article, we use Twitter data pertaining to BlackLivesMatter and Women’s movements and employ crowdsourcing and nested supervised learning methods to identify more than 50K SMOs. Our results reveal that the behavior and influence of SMOs vary significantly, with half having little influence and behaving in similar ways to an average individual. Furthermore, we show that collectively, small SMOs contributed to the sharing of more diverse information. However, on average, large SMOs were significantly more committed to movements and decidedly more successful at recruiting. Finally, we also observe that a large number of SMOs from an extensive set of SMIs, including Occupy Wall Street, participated in solidarity or even as leaders in BlackLivesMatter. In comparison, few SMIs participated in Women’s movement.

Social Movement Organizations in Online Movements

In the era of Web 2.0, social media based Internet activism is slowly replacing traditional civic engagements such as sit-ins, strikes, rallies, etc. Proponents of online activism postulate that low participation and coordination costs, and the decentralized structure of these platforms will render the services and functionalities provided by Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) nonessential. Yet, such claims currently lack empirical evidence since many existing studies do not distinguish the participation of SMOs from individuals, and are therefore unable to determine the value of SMOs in online protest movements. This paper aims to fill that knowledge gap. First, we use large-scale crowdsourcing platforms in combination with nested supervised learning models and identify more than 50 thousand SMOs participating in 2 distinct Twitter hashtag movements; next, by characterizing their primary objectives, we further assign each SMO to a specific social movement industry (SMI). We explore the attributes of these SMOs from five different perspectives: commitment, knowledge sharing, community building, structural significance and recruitment. We find that SMOs utilize a more diverse knowledge base, are more consistent and committed in their participation, apply more community-building efforts, possess more favorable positions within online protest networks, and contributed substantially to the recruitment of new participants compared to nonsocial movement organizations and individuals. We further compare and contrast behavior differences of SMOs from different SMIs. In summary, our findings show that the role of SMOs in social movements is far from over, even when focusing on online movements. In fact, social media affordances are allowing SMOs to participate together in a scope that is unattainable by traditional protesting methods.

Standards and Consumers - A Case Study of Packaged Drinking Water

Consumer bodies across the world, especially amongst developed countries have been performing prominent role in the process of standardization of products of mass consumption. Food sector, is an important area within which, packaged drinking water has emerged as a great market potential in recent times. Late 1990s saw a revolution of sorts when a handful of consumer organizations in India took it upon themselves to highlight the deficiencies in the system that led to interest of the consumer being sidelined as the regulations for bottled water were not as stringent as needed. Through effective use of science & technology in terms of conducting comparative product testing of various brands of packaged drinking water available in the market in independent laboratories and also comparing the Indian standards vis-a-vis the international ones, these organizations tried to open the eyes of public at large and Government bodies in particular. How this movement, a continuous one, has played a significant part in development and up gradation of standards for packaged drinking water is one of most important findings of the study. The study also tries to explore various facets of standardization — its definition, the process of standardization, major categories and its benefits. The study attempts to capture the involvement of different interest groups, especially, the consumer organizations and how it helps in shaping the standards. It is pertinent to mention here that the standards need not become the tools of power for the government or prerogative of big business houses; rather they should empower the people in asserting their rights as a consumer. Therefore the role of consumer organizations in standardization process not only needs to be recognized but also enhanced in terms of support from Government bodies. The commercial establishments or manufacturers on the other hand need to be sensitized to the issue of need for standards for food products. Strengthening the consumer movement by capacity building would encourage more and more people coming together for effective and greater contribution in the field of standardization and beneficial to the society on the whole. Standards have accordingly been a site of struggle between citizens and experts — or, more precisely, among social movement groups, academic scientists, regulators, and industries. The activism of health-based social movement organizations, for example, has often involved challenges to standardized procedures; the environmental justice movement in particular contests standards for statistical significance in epidemiological studies that systematically thwart fence line communities’ efforts to prove that disease rates are elevated in residential areas near hazardous facilities. Finally, the findings of this study throw light upon the potential benefits of associations likely to take place between Governmental organizations and consumer bodies involved in standard setting process in terms of collaborative studies or any other research efforts that are required and that must be inclusive of the end users.

Insularity or Solidarity? The Impacts of Political Opportunity Structure and Social Movement Sector on Alliance Formation

Past democratization processes revealed a rise of interorganizational collaboration between social movement organizations. This paper investigates this sociopolitical phenomenon by analyzing the conditions under which alliances form within or across social movement industries in the context of democratizing Korea. A negative binomial regression analysis examines the impacts of the political opportunity structure and the social movement sector on different forms of protests: single, intramovement, and intermovement protests. Statistical results show that various dimensions of the political opportunity structure render differential effects, rather than a uniform effect, on alliance patterns. At the organizational level, coalitions and organizational diversity positively affect all forms of protests. The establishment of a strong alliance structure broadly empowers movements by providing a locus of organizational interactions and supports.

The Organizational Demography of Japanese Environmentalism*

AbstractAlthough a macro‐organizational perspective has become increasingly commonplace in social movement analyses, few studies examine the full spectrum of organizations in any single social movement industry (SMI). Utilizing a unique source of data on Japanese environmental movement organizations, we compare characteristics of groups focused primarily on environmental issues with those for whom environmental issues are part of a larger multi‐issue focus. We then profile across distinct, and theoretically important, organizational domains to assess how local, prefectural and national groups compare on a variety of organizational attributes, including: size, membership type, tactics and activities, and issues. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for understanding both Japanese environmentalism and the structure of SMIs generally.

Competition and Resource Partitioning in Three Social Movement Industries

Drawing hypotheses from resource mobilization and resource partitioning theories (RMT and RPT), this article examines how interorganizational competition and social movement industry (SMI) concentration affect the level of tactical and goal specialization of protest organizations associated with the peace, women’s, and environmental movements. Additionally, the article examines how specialization affects the survival of these organizations. By and large, the findings are commensurate with the expectations of RMT and RPT. Results indicate that interorganizational competition leads to more specialized tactical and goal repertoires. Concentration in the SMI also leads to specialization, but this is only true for less established organizations. Results also indicate that tactical and goal specialization decrease organizational survival, unless the industry is highly concentrated.

Differential Impact of Repression on Social Movements: Christian Organizations and Liberation Theology in South Korea (1972–1979)*

During the height of authoritarianism in South Korea (1972–1979), Christian activists challenged the state along two dimensions. First, protesting Christians formed formal social movement organizations to better garner the resources to sustain their social movement. Second, they waged a discursive battle that challenged the legitimizing rhetoric of the state. By 1979, Christians developed a social movement industry involving the network of formal organizations as well as systematizing their rhetoric of protest in the guise of a Korean liberation theology; Minjung Theology. Drawing upon archival data and social movement theory, this study traces the rise and development of both the Christian social movement industry and Minjung Theology. We find that the emergence and evolution of mobilizing structures and movement frames were influenced by the state's repressive apparatuses and legitimizing rhetoric, respectively. Likewise, Christians’ attempts to mobilize and challenge the legitimizing rhetoric of the state further contributed to the closing of the political opportunity structure. This study empirically verifies recent theoretical work emphasizing the importance of considering the differential impact of repression on various components of a social movement.

Social Movement Organizations Beyond The Beltway: Understanding The Diversity Of One Social Movement Industry

This article utilizes a unique data set on a nationally representative sample of one social movement industry (groups working for peace) operating in the U.S. during the late 1980s. The data include the full spectrum of SMOs, which we divide into organizational domains that roughly parallel prior research and currently available secondary data sources: (1) numerous, but generally quite small groups that operate without tax-exempt status; (2) small, non-national, tax-exempt groups; (3) large, non-national, tax-exempt groups; (4) national organizations that have been the focus of most research in the field. First, the population parameters of the peace movement industry is estimated and groups typical of each domain profiled. We then undertake a series of analyses to examine how the groups in each of these four domains differ from each other on a variety of organizational attributes, including organizational form, co-sponsoring events, tactics and activities, membership type, participation in formal democracy, organizational governance, and issues. We pay particular attention to how the groups without a tax exemption and the non-national groups differ from the national SMOs, which have been the subject of so much prior research. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for understanding social movement organizations.

Hot Movements, Cold Cognition: Thinking about Social Movements in Gendered Frames

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The Emergence of the Integrationist Ideology in the Civil Rights Movement

In an attempt to integrate the importance of culture into the resource mobilization perspective, sociologists have introduced the notion of frames as a way to understand how movement leaders and movement participants identify grievances, devise strategies, and enumerate demands. In the civil rights movement, for example, sociologists have argued that the “rights” frame emerged because it resonated with some dominant values of our political culture. This analysis couples the rights frame with the more movement-specific ideology of integration and explains the origins of the integrationist ideology using a materialist and a political perspective. I argue that the emergence of integration was not primarily the result of a battle about which ideas were culturally more appealing but about: who controlled important sources of financing; which organization was able to court favor with political elites; and which organizations were actively repressed by those political elites. These conclusions challenge resource mobilization theorists to bring ideology into their analyses, not simply in terms of why people participate but more fundamentally in terms of how social movement organizations carve out their niches within a social movement industry.

Interorganizational influences on the founding of african american organizations, 1955–1985

This paper examines the relationship between traditions of social action and patterns of organizational development, using data on the formation of national African American protest, advocacy, and service organizations between 1955 and 1985. Following research in organizational ecology, Poisson regression is used to examine the association between organizational density and organizational formation across strategic forms. The results provide some support for the idea that interorganizational influences are important in shaping the contours of the African American social movement industry. Outside funding, internal organizational capacities and protest levels also play a significant role.

Social Movements in an Organizational Society: Collected Essays.

Introduction Resource Mobilization Theory 1. Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory The Infrastructure of Movements 2. Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Mobilization: Infrastructure Deficits and New Technologies 3. Religious Groups as Crucibles of Social Movements 4. Organizational Intellectuals and the Criticism of Society Processes of Organizational Change 5. Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay, and Change 6. From Evangelism to General Services: The Transformation of the YMCA 7. Social Movement Industries: Competition and Conflict Among SMOs Movements Within Organizations 8. Social Movements in Organizations: Coup d'Etat, Bureaucratic Insurgency, and Mass Movement 9. Aspects of Racial Integration in the Methodist Church: Sources of Resistance to Organizational Policy Movements and Countermovements 10. Movement and Countermovement Interaction: Mobilization, Tactics, and State Involvement 11. From Pressure Group to Social Movement: Efforts to Promote Use of Nuclear Power Social Movement Sectors and the Future 12. The Political Economy of Social Movement Sectors 13. The Future of Social Movements

Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory

Past analysis of social movements and social movement organizations has normally assumed a close link between the frustrations or grievances of a collectivity of actors and the growth and decline of movement activity. Questioning the theoretical centrality of this assumption directs social movement analysis away from its heavy emphasis upon the social psychology of social movement participants; it can then be more easily integrated with structural theories of social process. This essay presents a set of concepts and related propositions drawn from a resource mobilization perspective. It emphasizes the variety and sources of resources; the relationship of social movements to the media, authorities, and other parties; and the interaction among movement organizations. Propositions are developed to explain social movement activity at several levels of inclusiveness-the social movement sector, the social movement industry, and social movement organization.