Class 12: Social Movements online, in effect, dying out, and going forward

Movement impacts

Dr. Michael C. Zeller

Opening notes

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  • short synopsis for final essay due Friday (17 January) (send to me via email)

Presentation groups

Presentations line-up
Date Presenters Method
4 Dec: Daichi, Seongyeon, Jehyun ethnography
8 Jan: Ayla, Tara, Theresa, Annabelle discourse analysis
15 Jan: Luna, Emilene, Raffa interviewing

Course feedback

Please take a few minutes to fill in the course feedback survey (check your LMU email).

If have an opinion on these points in the comments:

  • Would you have preferred getting a specific assigned movement to independently study in depth? Yes/No
  • Would you have liked more structured discussions (e.g., set debates on class topics)? Yes/No
  • Would you rather that class readings are drawn from textbook(s) than journal articles? Yes/No
  • changes or additions to the course website?

Types of impact

  • opening questions
  • overview of types of impact
    • individual, organisational, political, cultural
  • example: Me Too movement
  • individual impact
  • organisational impact
  • political impact
  • cultural impact
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Opening questions

How have movements you know of had an impact on society?

  • Where and how can social movements have an impact? (Think in terms of categories or arenas of activism)
  • How might we differentiate between degrees of impact?

Movement impacts

Movement impacts

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cultural

Movement impacts

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political

cultural

Movement impacts

icons created by Flaticon

organisational

political

cultural

Movement impacts

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individual

organisational

political

cultural

Movement impacts - individual

individual

  • did people who participated change? how?
    • interpersonal connections (likely future movement participation)
  • did people who encountered the movement change? how?
    • different issue attention/focus? different attitudes?
  • participants, attitudinally: radicalised? disillusioned? behaviourally: more extreme? burnout?
  • onlookers responses: on immigration, culture? support/oppose?

Movement impacts - individual

individual

  • more likely to be recruited into other movement activism (e.g., 2019)
  • shapes how individuals think of movement participation (‘habitus’) (e.g., 2018)
  • strengthened attitudes around issues (even after disengagement) (e.g., 2022)
  • ‘only’ momentary participation (e.g., 2015)—participants might return to ‘normal’ life
  • despair and disengagement, e.g., (2019) …

The high cost of protesting and political participation coupled with frustration from the Brotherhood’s incapable leadership disenchanted several members who not only broke ties with the Brotherhood but also with politics as a whole.

Movement impacts

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individual

organisational

political

cultural

Movement impacts - organisational

organisational

  • a targeted organisation?
    • changed behaviour? organisational decline?
  • the movement’s own (or connected) organisation(s)?
    • professionalisation, institutionalisation
    • new affiliate organisations (perhaps parties, businesses)
  • targeted organisation: e.g., changed (political) financing activity, policies (as with platforms content moderation), hindered org.’s activity

Movement impacts

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individual

organisational

political

cultural

Movement impacts - political

political

  • have debates/discourse changed? (agenda setting)

  • have policies or laws changed? (legislative content; implementation/interpretation)

  • have dynamics between political actors changed? have new political actors emerged because of the movement? (political competition)

  • see Giugni, Mcadam, and Tilly (1999), Amenta and Young (1999), Amenta et al. (2010)

Movement impacts - political

political

  • gaining ‘new advantages’
  • formation of a new political party [e.g., Schwartz 2000]
    • (Europe) Green parties; (US) Tea Party \(\rightarrow\) Republican party (Madestam et al. 2013); (DE) Basis party
  • winning office
    • representatives may push for movements issues

Movement impacts

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individual

organisational

political

cultural

Movement impacts - cultural

cultural

  • have cultural/societal norms changed because of the movement? how?
    • are certain ideas, behaviours now acceptable or no longer acceptable in:
      • public opinion, lifestyle trends
      • media and popular culture
      • non-political institutions (e.g., research and education, religion)
  • see Amenta and Polletta (2019)
  • e.g., immigration views compared to two/three decades ago; acceptance of certain political rhetoric; approval of ‘strong man’ leadership in Western democracies

Movement impacts - cultural

cultural

  • changing attitudes
    • e.g., BLM and acceptability of violence; MeToo and social/sexual norms
    • often mediated by news coverage
  • changing behaviour
    • consumer purchasing behaviour
      • veganism
      • buying sustainably
      • digital detoxification/minimalism
    • moral commitments
      • e.g., abstinence pledge effect (likelier to delay sex; but less effect in homogeneous local community)

Movement impacts

icons created by Flaticon

individual

organisational

political

cultural

Movement impacts summarised

  1. individual
    • did the people who participated change? how?
    • did people who encountered the movement change? how?
  2. organisational
    • a targeted organisation?
    • the movement’s own (or connected) organisation?
  3. cultural
    • has the movement changed societal norms? how?
      • ideas, modes of behaviour no longer acceptable or (conversely) now expected?
  4. political
    • have debates/discourse changed?
    • have policies or laws changed?
    • have dynamics between political actors changed?
    • have new political actors emerged because of the movement?

Movement impacts summarised

for all of these: there is potential for backlash effects … including led by countermovements

  1. individual
    • did the people who participated change? how?
    • did people who encountered the movement change? how?
  2. organisational
    • a targeted organisation?
    • the movement’s own (or connected) organisation?
  3. cultural
    • has the movement changed societal norms? how?
      • ideas, modes of behaviour no longer acceptable or (conversely) now expected?
  4. political
    • have debates/discourse changed?
    • have policies or laws changed?
    • have dynamics between political actors changed?
    • have new political actors emerged because of the movement?

Example: the Me Too movement (1/2)

Example: the Me Too movement (2/2)

Determinants of impact

  • what influences chances of impact?
    • summarising determinants from previous classes
  • Ex: Just Stop Oil
  • Setter and Nepstad (2022)
    • background
  • a coda
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Movement impacts summarised

What influences if movements impact these areas?

  1. individual
    1. did the people who participated change? how?; (b) did people who encountered the movement change? how?
  2. organisational
    1. a targeted organisation?; (b) movement’s own (or related) org.?
  3. cultural
    • has movement changed societal (ideas, behaviours) norms?
  4. political
    1. have debates/discourse changed?; (b) have policies or laws changed?; (c) have dynamics between political actors changed?; (d) have new political actors emerged because of the movement?

How movements have an impact, summary

(a lot falls under the headings of resources or opportunities, but let’s be more specific than that…)

  • organisational attributes that facilitate coherent, sustained activism and getting attention
    • professionalisation (e.g., a media department)
    • (a minimum degree of) hierarchy
    • competent leadership
  • sound strategy
    • coherence between goals, frames, and actions/tactics
      • well done: U.S. civil rights (political, economic equality)
      • not so well done: Stop Oil and Letzte Generation…
    • (perceived) moderateness of goals/demands

How movements have an impact, summary

(a lot falls under the headings of resources or opportunities, but let’s be more specific than that…)

  • frame resonance (i.e., ideas get broader/influential support)
    • issue salience
    • substantive agreement
    • mediated by news coverage and social media
  • elite allies (i.e., individuals in key positions to help a movement)
    • favourable partisan context (e.g., Roe v. Wade [good context for feminist activists], then Equal Rights Amendment [changed to bad context for feminist activists])
  • mass support (i.e., too big to ignore by targets of mobilisation)
  • absence of a strong countermovement/opposing movement

How movements have an impact, summary

Amenta and Polletta (2019, 292):

While movements’ ability to effect change depends in part on how organized, resourced, and strategic they are, the real practical acumen comes in matching tactics to the institutional context in which movements operate. Whether the decision is to focus on raising consciousness or raising money, to lobby legislators or take to the streets, to tell stories or present statistics, the right choice depends both on features of the movement and on features of the institution.

How movements have an impact, a question

How might this movement (be aiming to) have an impact?

A study of impact - Setter and Nepstad (2022)

at the intersection of individual and cultural impact: public opinion

background on the George Floyd protests

  • a short summary of the background to the movement:

a longer history summary (Channel 4): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG8GjlLbbvs

Setter and Nepstad (2022) - design

  • RQ: When such events happen, how does this shape citizens’ views on politically-oriented violence?
  • Context:
    • ‘U.S. citizens expect protesters to conduct themselves nonviolently…’ (p. 430)
    • YET - “people find violence more acceptable when traditional political methods are incapable of adequately addressing social injustices”
  • Data:
    • from the American National Election Study’s (ANES) 2016 and 2020 samples

how SMs influence public opinion - (2022)

how SMs influence public opinion - (2022)

support for political violence (%) - (2022)

Demographic 2016 2020
Sample Overall 15.28 14.34
Extremely Liberal 14.55 30.79
Liberal 10.02 17.36
Slightly Liberal 16.83 16.23
Moderate 15.93 16.30
Slightly Conservative 14.84 8.59
Conservative 9.24 5.45
Extremely Conservative 12.71 8.22
White 11.79 10.89
Black 24.37 24.41
Men 16.45 14.13
Women 14.17 14.63
Age 18-29 28.40 30.42
Age 30-39 16.42 21.13
Age 40-49 14.54 16.85
Age 50-59 13.12 10.76
Age 60-69 9.86 7.15
Age 70-79 9.35 7.57
Age 80+ 15.03 6.02
Attends Church 16.10 12.82
Does Not Attend Church 14.00 15.81

any numbers that you think are noteworthy?

support for political violence (%) - (2022)

Demographic 2016 2020
Sample Overall 15.28 14.34
Extremely Liberal 14.55 30.79
Liberal 10.02 17.36
Slightly Liberal 16.83 16.23
Moderate 15.93 16.30
Slightly Conservative 14.84 8.59
Conservative 9.24 5.45
Extremely Conservative 12.71 8.22
White 11.79 10.89
Black 24.37 24.41
Men 16.45 14.13
Women 14.17 14.63
Age 18-29 28.40 30.42
Age 30-39 16.42 21.13
Age 40-49 14.54 16.85
Age 50-59 13.12 10.76
Age 60-69 9.86 7.15
Age 70-79 9.35 7.57
Age 80+ 15.03 6.02
Attends Church 16.10 12.82
Does Not Attend Church 14.00 15.81
  • “liberals became much more likely to find political violence acceptable … conservatives became much less likely to find themselves in support of violence…”
  • “Younger respondents were more likely to support political violence in 2020 … while their older counterparts were more opposed than before”

support for political violence (%) - (2022)

Demographic 2016 2020
Sample Overall 15.28 14.34
Extremely Liberal 14.55 30.79
Liberal 10.02 17.36
Slightly Liberal 16.83 16.23
Moderate 15.93 16.30
Slightly Conservative 14.84 8.59
Conservative 9.24 5.45
Extremely Conservative 12.71 8.22
White 11.79 10.89
Black 24.37 24.41
Men 16.45 14.13
Women 14.17 14.63
Age 18-29 28.40 30.42
Age 30-39 16.42 21.13
Age 40-49 14.54 16.85
Age 50-59 13.12 10.76
Age 60-69 9.86 7.15
Age 70-79 9.35 7.57
Age 80+ 15.03 6.02
Attends Church 16.10 12.82
Does Not Attend Church 14.00 15.81

One strange outlier is the 2016 survey’s proportion of 80+ year-olds who find political violence acceptable. We have checked the coding on this variable multiple times to ensure that there is nothing wrong with it, and it has remained accurate every time. Either the 2016 ANES just happened to capture a particularly rowdy set of senior citizens, or there was some cohort effect among that sample’s oldest respondents that was not shared among the 2020 cohort—such as lingering memories of WWII or the 1960s movements.

Setter and Nepstad (2022) - findings

Setter and Nepstad (2022) - findings

  • support for Black Lives Matter is significantly correlated with support for political violence.
  • “The impact of age intensified between 2016 and 2020. In the 2016 model, each additional year of age corresponds to a .2% lower likelihood of supporting political violence. In 2020, each additional year corresponds to a decrease of .4%, two times the impact of the previous model. In other words, in 2016, a fifty-year-old respondent would be 6% less likely to support political violence than a twenty-year-old respondent, net of all other factors. In 2020, by contrast, they would be 12% less likely to support political violence, net of all other factors.”
  • significance of higher education: having a college degree decreases support for political violence by 3.4%.

Setter and Nepstad (2022) - findings, revised model

Setter and Nepstad (2022) - findings

the George Floyd riots functioned as a new “situational variation” that shifted people’s attitudes, increasing the proportion of liberals and ardent BLM movement supporters who felt that the political violence was justifiable.”

  • “people may shift their attitudes about political violence yet again when a different movement poses a new situational variation. In one instance, people can be supportive of political violence and then, in a different instance, be morally opposed to it. The key factor shaping beliefs in any particular moment is how a person feels about the movement that is using political violence.”

How movements have an impact, a coda

From Mueller (2022)

  • there is the ‘illusion of cohesion’ among protesters—who in fact represent a diverse array of views
  • protesters can enhance their odds of success by coordinating around a unified message
    • may clash with some activists’ preferences for “intersectional” messages

a compromise would be to voice specific demands sequentially, so that each protest event has a cohesive theme (and a decent shot at success) but every issue eventually has it moment in the spotlight

Any questions, concerns, feedback for this class?

Anonymous feedback here: https://forms.gle/AjHt6fcnwZxkSg4X8

Alternatively, please send me an email: m.zeller@lmu.de

References

al-Anani, Khalil. 2019. “Rethinking the Repression-Dissent Nexus: Assessing Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood’s Response to Repression Since the Coup of 2013.” Democratization 0 (0): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2019.1630610.
Amenta, Edwin, Neal Caren, Elizabeth Chiarello, and Yang Su. 2010. “The Political Consequences of Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology 36 (1): 287–307. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-120029.
Amenta, Edwin, Neal Caren, Sheera Joy Olasky, and Edwin Amenta. 2005. “Age for Leisure? Political and the Impact of the Mediation Pension Movement on U . S . Old-Age Policy.” American Sociological Review 70 (3): 516–38.
Amenta, Edwin, and Francesca Polletta. 2019. “The Cultural Impacts of Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology 45: 279–99. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073018.
Amenta, Edwin, and Michael P. Young. 1999. “Democratic States and Social Movements: Theoretical Arguments and Hypotheses.” Social Problems 46 (2): 153–68. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.1999.46.2.03x0183a.
Carty, Victoria. 2015. “Party in the Street: The Antiwar Movement and the Democratic Party After 9 / 11 by Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas.” Political Science Quarterly, 202–3.
Gamson, William A. 1990. The Strategy of Social Protest. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing.
Gaudette, Tiana, Ryan Scrivens, and Vivek Venkatesh. 2022. “Disengaged but Still Radical? Pathways Out of Violent Right-Wing Extremism.” Terrorism and Political Violence 00 (00): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2022.2082288.
Giugni, Marco, Doug Mcadam, and Charles Tilly. 1999. How Social Movements Matter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gundelach, Peter, and Jonas Toubøl. 2019. “High- and Low-Risk Activism: Differential Participation in a Refugee Solidarity Movement.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 24 (2): 199–220. https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-24-2-199.
Madestam, Andreas, Daniel Shoag, Stan Veuger, and David Yanagizawa-Drott. 2013. “Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Party Movement.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 128 (4): 1633–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjt021.Advance.
Mueller, Lisa. 2022. “Crowd Cohesion and Protest Outcomes.” American Journal of Political Science, August, ajps.12725. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12725.
Setter, Davyd, and Sharon Erickson Nepstad. 2022. “How Social Movements Influence Public Opinion on Political Violence: Attitude Shifts in the Wake of the George Floyd Protests.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 27 (4): 429–44. https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-27-4-429.
Shoshan, Aya. 2018. “Habitus and Social Movements: How Militarism Affects Organizational Repertoires.” Social Movement Studies 17 (2): 144–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2017.1408006.