There has been rapid growth in the study of diffusion across organizations and social movements in recent years, fueled by interest in institutional arguments and in network and dynamic analysis. This research develops a sociologically grounded account of change emphasizing the channels along which practices flow. Our review focuses on characteristic lines of argument, emphasizing the structural and cultural logic of diffusion processes. We argue for closer theoretical attention to why practices diffuse at different rates and via different pathways in different settings. Three strategies for further development are proposed: broader comparative research designs, closer inspection of the content of social relations between collective actors, and more attention to diffusion industries run by the media and communities of experts.

Studying collective action with newspaper accounts of protest events, rare only 20 years ago, has become commonplace in the past decade. A critical literature has accompanied the growth of protest event analysis. The literature has focused on selection bias-particularly which subset of events are covered-and description bias-notably, the veracity of the coverage. The "hard news" of the event, if it is reported, tends to be relatively accurate. However, a newspaper's decision to cover an event at all is influenced by the type of event, the news agency, and the issue involved. In this review, we discuss approaches to detecting bias, as well as ways to factor knowledge about bias into interpretations of protest event data.

This paper uses social movement theory to examine one way in which secondary stakeholders outside the corporation may influence organizational processes, even if they are excluded from participating in legitimate channels of organizational change. Using data on activist protests of U.S. corporations during 1962–1990, we examine the effect of protests on abnormal stock price returns, an indicator of investors' reactions to a focal event. Empirical analysis demonstrates that protests are more influential when they target issues dealing with critical stakeholder groups, such as labor or consumers, and when generating greater media coverage. Corporate targets are less vulnerable to protest when the media has given substantial coverage to the firm prior to the protest event. Past media attention provides alternative information to investors that may contradict the messages broadcast by protestors.

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This book examines anti-corporate activism in the United States, including analysis of anti-corporate challenges associated with social movements as diverse as the Civil Rights Movement and the Dolphin-safe Tuna Movement. Using a unique dataset of protest events in the United States, the book shows that anti-corporate activism is primarily about corporate policies, products, and negligence. Although activists have always been distrustful of corporations and sought to change them, until the 1970s and 1980s, this was primarily accomplished via seeking government regulation of corporations or via organized labor. Sarah A. Soule traces the shift brought about by deregulation and the decline in organized labor, which prompted activists to target corporations directly, often in combination with targeting the state. Using the literatures on contentious and private politics, which are both essential for understanding anti-corporate activism, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the changing focal points of activism directed at corporations.