Media, Movements, and Mobilization: Tea Party Protests in the United States, 2009–2010

Banerjee, Tarun

doi:10.1108/s0163-786x(2013)0000036005

Cited by 17 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Studies confirm that news media are a crucial component to spreading mobilization and protest tactics (e.g., Andrews and Biggs ). Movements that access the media are more likely to attract resources, grow, and spread, even in cases where the coverage is critical of the movement (Banerjee ; Bob ). More broadly, movements can gain “mediated” leverage by damaging the reputations of their targets through media access (King ; McDonnell and King ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Leverage of Protest: Market, Media, and Reputational Disruption in Social Movement Success

Banerjee

Case

2019

Sociological Forum

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do social movements gain concessions from large corporations? The ability of protests to attain leverage by imposing disruption costs on their targets is widely assumed but less often tested. In this article, we assess the ability of protests to attain concessions by disrupting three broad sources of interest to firm officials: maximizing shareholder value, gaining positive media, and fostering a well‐reputed image. In contrast to the body of research on the benefits to movements from shaping media discourses and damaging the reputations of their targets, we find that only market disruption provides protests with leverage. We show this through statistical analyses of an original database of protests against large corporations in the United States over five years, 2005–2009. This study advances social movement and organizational research by demonstrating the ways in which the interests of large corporations provide insurgents with means of attaining leverage over their targets. It also speaks to the broad debate over the importance of disrupting the material versus symbolic interests of movement targets. Our results suggest that when it comes to obtaining concessions from large corporations, it is material disruption and not symbolic disruption that provides movements with leverage.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Leverage of Protest: Market, Media, and Reputational Disruption in Social Movement Success

Banerjee

Case

2019

Sociological Forum

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, news media served as a crucial channel to disseminate protest information in the civil rights movement (Andrews and Biggs, ). More recently, in collaboration with the conservative media, the Tea Party movement has successfully created a framing of “liberal media bias,” which enables a mobilizing effect where negative coverage in the mainstream media increased mobilization (Banerjee, ). Apart from large social movement organizations, fringe organizations can instill fear and anger through utilizing the mainstream media, achieving their own goals of mobilization (Bail, ).…”

Section: Media and Protest In Advanced Democracies And Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

Media Freedom and Protest Events in the Global South*

Zhao

2019

Social Science Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective. This articles analyzes the relationship between media freedom and protest onset in 60 African and Latin American countries from 1993 to 2015. Additional analysis is conducted to explore such relationship for different types of protest events. Method. The article is based on event history data generated from the Social Conflict Analysis Database, Freedom House, Polity IV, the World Bank, and the International Telecommunication Union, which are analyzed using Cox regression models. Results. The results indicate a consistent curvilinear relationship between media freedom and protest onset. In other words, only when media is severely restricted can it pose a significant threat to protest mobilization. Results also show that spontaneous protest events are more likely to be affected by changes in media freedom than organized protests. Conclusions. This study incorporates media freedom into the study of contentious politics in the Global South. It separately analyzes multiple types of protests instead of lumping them into one category, offering a more detailed pattern of the heterogeneous effect of media freedom in different protest contexts.

show abstract

“…, ; McLeod and Hertog ; Prior ; Rojecki ). Finally, scholars determine whether stories about a movement are favorable or unfavorable overall (e.g., Banerjee ; Boyle et al. , ; Boyle, McLeod, and Armstrong ; Rohlinger ).…”

Section: Media Certification Of Social Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are They Not Worthy? How Partisan Political Blogs Legitimize the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street

Laschever

2017

Sociological Forum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social movements struggle to gain acceptance as legitimate actors so that they can raise money, recruit members, and convince politicians to meet their demands. We know little, however, about how this legitimacy is granted by various political authorities, in part because legitimacy is often poorly operationalized. To operationalize legitimacy, I revise Charles Tilly's () classic concept of WUNC displays (i.e., public presentations of worthiness, unity, numbers, commitment) to assess how political authorities legitimize social movements. I analyze original data on the coverage the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street received from 20 elite political blogs during a critical event early in each movement's development. I find that liberal and conservative blogs both use the same aspects of worthiness (and not unity, numbers, or commitment) to endorse their preferred movement but different aspects of unworthiness to denounce the movement they opposed. Conservative outlets were more partisan on both accounts. This suggests that these blogs' shared status as distinctly partisan political outsiders produces a similar, but not identical, relationship with social movements. While both sets of blogs legitimize and delegitimize a movement based on its specific strengths and weaknesses, conservative blogs act more as a partisan bullhorn and liberal blogs act more as a forum for debate.

show abstract

Media, Movements, and Mobilization: Tea Party Protests in the United States, 2009–2010

Cited by 17 publications

References 42 publications

The Leverage of Protest: Market, Media, and Reputational Disruption in Social Movement Success

The Leverage of Protest: Market, Media, and Reputational Disruption in Social Movement Success

Media Freedom and Protest Events in the Global South*

Are They Not Worthy? How Partisan Political Blogs Legitimize the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About