Social Movement Organizations Research Articles

The DAO to DeSci: AI for Free, Fair, and Responsibility Sensitive Sciences

This article discusses the impact and significance of the autonomous science movement and the role and potential uses of intelligent technology in DAO-based decentralized science (DeSci) organizations and operations. What is DeSci? How does it relate the science of team science? What are its potential contributions to multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and/or transdisciplinary studies? Does it have any correspondence to the social movement organizations in traditional social sciences or the cyber movement organizations in the new digital age? Particularly, issues on DeSci to current professional communities, such as IEEE and its societies, conferences, and publications, are addressed, and the effort for the framework and process of DAO-based DeSci for free, fair, and responsibility sensitive sciences is reviewed.

Forging Plural Coalitions in Times of Polarisation: Protest for an Open Society in Germany

ABSTRACT This article analyses the ‘Unteilbar coalition for an open and plural society’ in Germany, as an emblematic case to advance scholarship on cross-movement coalition-building and intersectionality in social movement studies. We argue that migration-related polarisation and an accentuated threat of rising far-right mobilisation has provided a context for progressive social movement organisations in Germany to converge and to engage in a particular kind of boundary spanning. The organisations involved have actively constructed an intersectional variant of ‘political solidarity’ by interlocking diverse socio-political struggles – explicitly moving beyond the topic of migration. In contrast to the common understanding of heterogeneous coalitions, being both challenging and prone to fragmentation, we argue that the boundary spanning work performed during Unteilbar has resulted in the outcome of a sustainable mobilisation capacity, and a fostering of movement solidarity rooted in an ‘intersectional consciousness’.

Framing Indigenous protest in the online public sphere: A comparative frame analysis

Indigenous social movement organizations are increasingly using social media to engage in strategic framing, a dynamic discursive process that seeks to attribute meaning to events and circumstances. But there remains a gap in our knowledge with respect to the impact of social media on the capacity of Indigenous actors to engage in frame competition in the virtual world. Based on a comparative frame analysis of online content in three Latin American countries where Indigenous organizations have recently engaged in large-scale protest, we ask to what extent the frames generated by Indigenous actors on social media are reflected in the online public sphere. We examine how their protest action is framed by Indigenous organizations themselves, the media, and government agencies. We find that social media do provide an outlet for Indigenous actors to disseminate counter-hegemonic frames. But state and media actors do not engage with Indigenous frames disseminated over social media, and their messages do not change the tone or direction of online discourse.

Mobilising around Europe: a conceptual framework and introduction to the special section

ABSTRACT This article provides a conceptual framework and introduction to the special section ‘Mobilising around Europe: pro and anti-EU politics in an era of populism and nationalism’. By means of its four articles, the special section seeks to address the ‘politicisation of Europe’ outside of the conventional party-political arena. Whilst the future of European integration has become increasingly contested, not least due to the rise of Eurosceptic political parties of the populist radical right, we observe that politicisation has also occurred in the protest arena through grassroots activism. The contributions in this special section analyse these mobilisations, which have thus far received limited scholarly attention, and the positions and frames activists and various social movement organisations (SMOs) adopt concerning the future of European integration. By doing this, these articles reveal the often complex and context-dependent stances towards ‘Europe’ amongst actors across the ideological spectrum, which extend beyond dichotomous pro-/anti-EU positions.

“Defund the police:” Perceptions among protesters in the 2020 March on Washington

AbstractResearch summary: Using qualitative interviews, this study examines how protesters with varying levels of commitment to the Black Lives Matter movement perceive the slogan defund the police. Findings indicate while a small number had reservations regarding the term, the vast majority of protesters associate defunding as a two‐step process that starts with reduction of police budgets, followed by reallocation of these resources toward much needed services in the very communities the departments serve. Findings also revealed prior engagement with the Black Lives Matter movement, and the level of commitment of participants did play an important role in being able to provide nuanced context to the call for action.Policy implications: Implementation of reduction of police budgets indicates a need to reimagine the role and function of police in most affected communities. In addition, there is a need to reinvest in local resources that would provide the much needed support toward marginalized communities. Further, social movement organizations should partner with corporate brands and advertising agencies to effectively promote their goals and slogans toward a diverse range of audience in media.

Flipping the “New Penology” Script: Police Misconduct Insurance, Grassroots Activism, and Risk Management–Based Reform

Through a multi-method qualitative case study, I examine the failed 2016 ballot campaign of the Committee for Professional Policing (CfPP), a police accountability group in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In attempting to make Minneapolis the first city nationwide to require police to carry professional liability insurance, the CfPP turned the logic of Malcolm M. Feeley and Jonathan Simon’s “new penology” paradigm onto police. Their thesis argues that a contemporary penal shift occurred away from rehabilitation toward managing aggregates of dangerous criminal categories through risk management approaches. I extend their thesis in a new direction by examining how—in the emerging age of “algorithmic risk governance”—social movement organizations, like the CfPP, are starting to invert the new penology onto criminal justice personnel. In flipping the script, the CfPP called for a new private insurance market using mandatory police misconduct insurance to manage aggregates of dangerous police officers. After highlighting how the CfPP developed new penological objectives, discourses, and technologies, I discuss the implications of grassroots groups adopting and redefining traditional penal logics and propose future research avenues.

“Collaborative Research and Action for Climate Justice in California”

ABSTRACT How can university scholars and community activists effectively collaborate to produce generative, empowering, and materially impactful knowledge and actions concerning climate change and climate justice? In this paper, we report on a collaborative effort between climate justice non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and university faculty and students to conduct research to produce innovative ideas and insights about just transitions in California and to support social movement campaigns aimed at actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions by keeping fossil fuels in the ground. This collaboration was jointly initiated by faculty and students at a California university alongside leaders of local social movement organizations dedicated to climate justice, as a response to several proposed development projects that would expand oil extraction and fossil fuel use in that state. We argue that these efforts produced a climate justice gestalt that serves to amplify our productivity, power, and impact well beyond what any single partner could do separately or individually with respect to addressing climate injustices in our region. This is our plan for addressing climate change from an anti-authoritarian, participatory approach that will speak to new developments in the scholarship on climate and environmental justice studies and collaborative research methods.

Frenemies: Overcoming Audiences’ Ideological Opposition to Firm–Activist Collaborations

Collaborations between organizations from different sectors, such as those between firms and nonprofits or governments, can offer effective solutions to complex societal problems like climate change. But complications arise because organizations operating in different sectors rely on the approval of different audiences, who may not view these relationships positively, for resources and survival. I show how concerns about audience approval impede cross-sector collaborations forming between firms and social movement organizations (SMOs) despite their potential societal benefits. Firms wanting to signal their efforts in support of a movement’s cause may be eager to form collaborations with SMOs. But when SMOs’ supporters and/or peers define their identity in opposition to firms—when they are oppositional audiences—collaborations do not form. I argue and find that SMOs who cooperate, and don’t compete, with oppositional peers can better navigate the constraint of oppositional audiences. Firms, in contrast, aggravate the constraint of oppositional audiences. Firms’ inclination to seek collaborations to repair their reputations with their own audiences after being contentiously targeted by a movement compounds the challenge to SMOs of partnering with the enemies of their friends. My arguments on countervailing audience effects stifling collaborations are corroborated in 25 years of data on interactions between SMOs in multiple environmental movements and Fortune 500 firms.

Social Movement Outcomes and the Transformation of Boundaries in Crisis-Ridden Greece

The literature of social movement outcomes is engaged with the study of social change. However, social movement theories limit the explanatory potential of social movements' political outcomes, only in relation to policy and institutional change. Therefore, they do not pay attention to the various political qualities which emerge from protest cycles and move away from institutional arrangements. Against this backdrop, the paper suggests approaching social transformations as changes in boundaries. Boundaries define, each time, the limits of social settings and describe organizational and identarian aspirations of social change in daily life. Periods of crises are characterized by intense transformations, which overcome the old and create new boundaries. Based on qualitative field research conducted in more than 50 social movement organizations in Greece, between 2016 and 2017, the paper analyses the mechanisms that facilitated the enlargement of social movements' cognitive and structural boundaries, towards service-oriented repertoires of action. By studying social movement outcomes through boundary transformations, the paper challenges the rigid categorizations of movement outcomes and unravels the interactions among their personal, cultural and political aspects. As such, it demonstrates the need for social movement theories to consider non-institutional political changes of daily life, within the study of movement outcomes.

Deciding what’s (sharable) news: Social movement organizations as curating actors in the political information system

ABSTRACT News is often sourced not directly from journalistic outlets, but from various actors that “curate” content into individuals' information networks. Although these curating actors impact the news individuals receive, little is known about their behind-the-scenes curatorial decision-making. Addressing this gap, I isolated one kind of curating actor in the flow of political information: social movement organizations. Drawing on an ethnographic case study from the U.S. transgender movement, I analyzed the “logics of curation” at play in organizations' social media practices. These logics included the internal criteria by which they decided what news stories to share, how they decided when and by which media each story should be shared, and what they hoped to achieve as the end result of curation.

Credible and salient: examining frame resonance through Athlete Ally

Scholars have noted that, within Social Movement Organizations (SMO), communication plays an important role achieving social change. One SMO, Athlete Ally, aims to end homophobia and transphobia in sport. Founded in 2011, Athlete Ally consists of less than 10 full-time members and over 150 Athlete Ambassadors. To successfully generate change within sport, Athlete Ally must maintain clear and consistent communication with its constituents Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine how Athlete Ally develops credible and salient frames throughout the organization and with its Athlete Ambassadors through the lens of Cultural Theory/Frame Analysis. The researchers interviewed employees, board members, and Athlete Ambassadors of Athlete Ally and examined organizational documents to understand how credible and salient frames are developed. Results indicated strong core values, personal stories and hard data, a diverse staff, target messaging, and sport itself were strategies employed by Athlete Ally to create frames that resonate with its audience.

Feeling climate change to the bone: emotional topologies of climate

This paper addresses climate change through collaborative work with social movement organisations in the Philippines. We contend that the tendency of work on climate change, social resilience and climate justice to ignore epistemological questions and proceed through technocentric dominant frames can lead to partial responses that support the status quo, contribute to slow (or fast) violence, and enhance ongoing processes of marginalisation. Instead, we argue, there is a need to co-develop analyses with those most affected. The experiences shared in this paper speak to complex knowings of climate and the intimate hurts of disaster, and provide rich scope for resistance and change. We find knowledges to be affective, emotional and relational, and deeply imbued with power relations. These insights lead us to theorise a topological angle on the knowings and beings of climate: to turn to emotional topologies. In seeking to elaborate on emotional topologies of climate, we draw on the concept of knowledge spaces to better understand meanings and practices of climate as emergent motleys of linked people, sites, affective process, activities and technologies. In the emergent nature of these spaces, there is scope for disruption, re-ordering and resistance.

Leaderlessness in social movements: Advancing space, symbols, and spectacle as modes of “Leadership”

AbstractThe emergence of the Occupy movements along with other social movements in 2011 elevated the idea of radically decentralized “leaderless” social movement organizations. We argue that looking at such an alternative, horizontalist form of organizing presents an opportunity to reframe how we understand leadership. This paper illustrates how the coordination of the Occupy London movement was accomplished horizontally in the absence of formal organization, leadership, or authority structures. Using an ethnographic approach, we show how this movement generated a “multimodal” repertoire of protest that included (1) the politically effective occupation of urban space; (2) the ability to deploy symbols as compelling forms of aesthetic questioning; and (3) the creation of politically charged spectacles that allowed the movement to appropriate the news agendas of established broadcast media. The findings of this paper challenge the language of leadership and contribute to understandings of feminist forms of leadership and leaderless organizing by explaining one way that “leadership” occurs in horizontal organizational structures such as social movements. Namely we demonstrate how the modes of space, symbols, and spectacles effectively replace the role of “leader” in the absence of formal organizational structures.

Activists Against Autocrats: TSMO Networks and Democratic Diffusion

Do transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) promote the international diffusion of democracy? If so, how? Scholars of democratization have studied a plethora of international factors in the spread of democracy, including geographic or regional proximity, colonial history, trade and alliance networks, and joint inter-governmental organization (IGO) memberships. Few have studied the role of TSMO networks in democratic diffusion. We theorize that TSMOs empower and connect civil societies and thus promote democracy from the “bottom up.” Leveraging a new TSMO Dataset and data on the dimensions of democracy from the Varieties of Democracy project over the 1953–2013 period, we find that TSMOs promote democratic diffusion. TSMOs are strongest at diffusing participatory democracy. TSMOs also contribute to the diffusion of electoral democracy but do so by promoting the diffusion of freedom of association and freedom of expression rather than elections.

The politics of alliances. The making and breaking of social movement coalitions. Introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT This special issue will focus on processes and mechanisms of the making and unmaking of alliances among different grassroots, civil society, and social movement organizations. The formation of alliances is a key principle and basic mechanism of mobilization and the emergence of social movements. When focusing on why and how alliances emerge, social movement scholars tend to neglect that the making and breaking of coalitions is embedded in and interacting with broader social dynamics of societal fragmentation and convergence. We understand the politics of alliances as a process in which decisions about friends and foes are made and where increased attachment toward one’s group helps to consolidate the constituency and create a feeling of belonging, but by doing so also accentuates antagonism and conflict structures in society, crystallizing interests into opposing fractions. Such dynamics often happen at the same time. Social movements may foster ideological alignment and belonging with some actors while creating more ideological distance towards others – thereby shaping the overall structure of societal relations. The contributions in the special issue build upon existing research on alliances and expands it – focusing on different friends and foes dynamics – in three important aspects: First, they look at how alliance formation interacts with the (re-)making of social boundaries and identities. Second, they address the consequences alliance formation can have across levels and contexts. Third, they explicitly look into cases where alliances fail or dissolve, and thus address the consequences of (un)making alliances.

‘You can’t repeal regret’: targeting men for mobilisation in Ireland’s abortion debate

This study explores how social movement organisations involved in the abortion debate in the Republic of Ireland attempted to appeal to men in their campaign messages before the 2018 referendum on the Eighth Amendment concerning abortion. We scrape social movement organisations’ Twitter accounts to conduct quantitative and qualitative content analyses of images and videos the organisations posted, and find evidence that social movement organisations sometimes extended their frames to men as voters. Social movement organisations evoked themes of hegemonic masculinity in their imagery and messaging, though these themes were not a large portion of overall campaign tweets and there were distinct differences in how this was done by the two organisations we study. Previous research suggests anti-abortion organisations extend their frames to incorporate ‘pro-woman’ messaging. Our research contributes by exploring the ways that frames may be extended by both anti- and pro-abortion actors to target men and mobilise masculinity in public debates over women’s rights.

Based on a true story: the use of conversion stories in social movements

ABSTRACT Movements attempt to change beliefs and behavior. Yet we know little about what happens following one of the most dramatic forms of change: movement from one side of a contentious issue to the opposition. I examine four cases of movement conversion, focusing on how actors present conversion stories. I find converts, journalists, and sympathetic activists present converts as credible experts on the opposition and use their stories to graphically demonize the opposition. It’s not surprising that converts and like-minded activists accept and publicize converts’ stories for their gain. It is notable that the media frequently presents conversion stories in an uncritical manner, emphasizing the most sensational elements of converts’ tales without questioning the truth of their claims. As a result, converts’ former insider status is primarily presented as an unproblematic source of credibility across mediums. This suggests converts can be valuable assets to social movement organizations, capturing media attention and demonizing the opposition in a persuasive and compelling manner.

From Organizational-Centric Engagement to Network-Centric Engagement: The Role of Autonomous Public Communities in a Mediated Public Policy Advocacy Network

In this study, we explore how a social movement organization ( Sunrise.org ) and its autonomous public community advocated for the Green New Deal on social media. An autonomous public community is a group of publics that initially connect with each other through their engagement with a focal organization. Then, they go on to develop ties among themselves that go beyond simply responding to organizations’ messages. Autonomous public communities are ubiquitous on social media. Our research identifies unique patterns of interactions in an autonomous public community and finds that the Tertius Iungens orientation brings the network together. We also find that while the focal organization is not centralized in an autonomous public community, it still significantly affects tie formation and discourse as the networks evolve. Our study reveals a nuanced understanding of networked organization–public engagement where network structure and discourse are co-created by the organizations and the communities that they engage.

Influence of the pandemic lockdown on Fridays for Future's hashtag activism.

Social movement organizations (SMOs) increasingly rely on Twitter to create new and viral communication spaces alongside newsworthy protest events and communicate their grievance directly to the public. When the COVID-19 pandemic impeded street protests in spring 2020, SMOs had to adapt their strategies to online-only formats. We analyze the German-language Twitter communication of the climate movement Fridays for Future (FFF) before and during the lockdown to explain how SMOs adapted their strategy under online-only conditions. We collected (re-)tweets containing the hashtag #fridaysforfuture (N = 46,881 tweets, N = 225,562 retweets) and analyzed Twitter activity, use of hashtags, and predominant topics. Results show that although the number of tweets was already steadily declining before, it sharply dropped during the lockdown. Moreover, the use of hashtags changed substantially and tweets focused increasingly on thematic discourses and debates around the legitimacy of FFF, while tweets about protests and calls for mobilization decreased.

Flexland in wording.

Internationally, the 1980s marked a shift in economic policy. In the Netherlands, it was the decade of the supposedly moderate neoliberal turn and of the first round of flexibilization. Nowadays, the degree of flexibility of the Dutch labour market is exceptionally high compared to neighbouring countries. This article examines how the trade union movement in the 1980s responded to increasing flexibilization, which strategy was used, and how this contributed to early Dutch flexibilization. In contrast to the literature with an institutional perspective, this article analyzes the trade union movement from a social-historical perspective and as a social movement organization. As a result, it argues that the effects of rising flexibilization were signalled very early on within the trade unions. Be that as it may, both the priorities that followed from the agreements with employer organizations and the internal dynamics, were decisive for the trade union movement’s relatively late and unassertive responses towards the flexibilization of labour in the 1980s.