Edwin Amenta University of California-Irvine
To understand social movements and the politics of the disadvantaged one needs to understand social movement organizations and political advocacy organizations (SMOs being used as an abbreviation for both) and their media coverage. Scholars argue that SMOs provide critical resources to seek social change, help to construct political identities and interests, and provide sites for civic engagement. Similarly, scholars agree that the attention of the mass news media is critical to the struggles of challengers. Gaining coverage is also a mark of the influence of SMOs--a measure of their success in being treated as legitimate spokespersons for the groups or causes they claim to represent--and increases their support. Yet there is no big empirical picture of the rise, decline, and persistence of SMOs across movements and over time through newspapers. This is despite the fact that newspaper coverage is perhaps the only measure of influence that can analyzed across many movements and over long stretches of time. To fill this major gap, the PI will collect new data on articles in which all U.S. SMOs were mentioned in national newspapers--the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times--since the 1890s. The PI will then use these data to address several fundamental questions about SMOs and movement families: Which U.S. SMOs and allied movement families have received the greatest newspaper coverage in the century? Are they the ones that movement scholarship would lead us to expect? How has the coverage changed over time overall and across movements? How does coverage compare to standard, limited measures of SMO scale or activity, such as organizational density, membership, resource mobilization, or protest events? Are the historical trajectories of coverage consistent with the main theories of social movements, including resource mobilization, new social movement, and political process/protest cycle theories? Can these and other theories predict the standing that SMOs receive and their visibility or placement in their coverage? The PI will assess these theoretical models through historical investigation, formal qualitative analyses, and time-series regression analyses. In doing so the PI seeks to reinvigorate the use of formal qualitative analyses, as well as to appraise and develop social movement theory.
Broader Impacts
The project will provide the first long-term mapping of U.S. SMOs and movements, and the quality of their newspaper coverage. The project builds upon a dataset of media coverage about social movement organizations in major, national newspapers. The initial dataset covers the New York Times for the 20th century; this extension covers articles from the late 19th century to the present in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. This addition will provide a unique longitudinal dataset on a wide range of social movements and their most visible organizations. Research findings have the potential to appeal to the general public and policymakers and will provide a greater understanding of today's social movements in comparison with those of the past.
This project seeks tot make sense of social movements and U.S. history through collecting information on the newspaper coverage social movement organizations and political advocacy organizations. Scholars argue that these politically active and public interest-oriented organizations provide critical resources to seek social change, help to construct political identities and interests, and spur collective civic engagement. Scholars agree that the attention of the mass news media is critical to the struggles of these organizations. Gaining coverage in national newspapers is also a mark of the influence of movement and advocacy organization. It treats them as legitimate spokespersons for the groups or causes they claim to represent and increases their support. Movement scholars have generated important data on these public interest and political advocacy organizations, including collecting information on the membership and revenues for prominent organization, the numbers of people in unions, conducting surveys of unconventional political participation, and enumerating strikes and protest events. However, until this project no one has been able to draw a big empirical picture of any aspect of the rise, decline, and persistence of these organizations across movements and over time. To fill this major gap in our knowledge, we collected new data on all the articles in which U.S. movement and political advocacy organizations were mentioned in national newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. We were able to address several fundamental questions about movement organizations and the larger movement and advocacy families or industries to which they are linked: Which U.S. movement organiozations and allied movement families have received the greatest newspaper coverage in the century? Are they the ones that movement scholarship would lead us to expect? How has the coverage changed over time overall and across movements? How does coverage compare to standard, limited measures of movement organization scale or activity? Can coverage figures serve as a partial substitute for data much less easily generated, once biases are taken into account? Are the historical trajectories of coverage consistent with the main theories of social movements, including resource mobilization, new social movement/post-materialist, and political process/protest cycle? We have been able to answer many of these questions through this research. We found that approximately 1300 national movement or advocacy organizations received some coverage through these newspapers, and we combined them into 34 movement families or industries. The main finding is that the coverage leader is the labor movement. It received about 40 percent of the movement organization coverage in the Times and about 30 percent in the Post. The second highest movement industry receiving coverage in the Times is the African-American civil rights movement, which is lower than the coverage of labor by more than a factor of four. The main 1960s and 1970s movements, the African-American civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements are also among the leaders. In the Times, after labor, the most covered movement industries were, in order, African-American civil rights, veterans, feminism, nativism, progressive, and environmental. The order for the other papers was similar. We also found that at the level of 34 movement families or industries newspaper coverage was highly correlated with other measures used by scholars of the presence or activity of these movement industries or families. Through a series of analytical techniques we sought to ascertain whether these historical patterns of coverage were consistent with theories about what causes movement activity or presence. We find that patterns in the coverage of these movements are partly consistent with the resource mobilization, political process/protest cycle, and new social movement theories. However, coverage has not co-varied with disposable income, as expected by resource mobilization theory. Nor has coverage assumed a regular cyclical pattern, as expected by political process/protest cycle theory. Moreover, recent movement and advocacy organizations based on post-material values have not displaced previous organizations in newspaper attention, as would be expected by new social movement/post materialist theory. Instead, we develop an argument, a "political reform" theory. It argues that movement organizations and their coverage will be boosted by way of policy changes. The political reform theory provides a better explanation of the patterns of coverage, when it was assessed through historical investigation, formal qualitative analyses, and negative binomial regression analyses. The project provided the first long-term mapping of U.S. movements, and gives us a greater understanding of today’s social movements in comparison with those of the past. It also helps us to adjudicate debates about what promotes these organizations and their activities. The project has also resulted in the training of graduate students and the development of their skills as young scholars.
