Week 5: Processes of Communication & Recruitment

Question 1

What is recruitment?

Answer 1

The process by which individuals become involved in movements

Question 2

What are networks?

Answer 2

Interpersonal or inter-organizational ties

Question 3

Why do networks matter in mobilization?

Answer 3

1. people sort themselves into like-minded networks (network homophily)
2. networks connect individuals to opportunities for participation
3. networks shape individual decisions on whether to participate or not

Involvement in an organization related to a movement or knowing someone already involved in a movement are much stronger predictors of individual involvement than attitudes and psychological orientations

Question 4

What is bloc recruitment and what are some examples?

Answer 4

Mobilizing support form within existing associations and organizations whose members might be predisposed to participate
- cheapest form of recruitment
- involves overlapping participation in social movement organizations and associations

Examples: Civil rights movements & left-wing social movements

Question 5

What is recruitment through interpersonal networks?

Answer 5

• most participants in movement activities participate with friends and acquaintances

Question 6

What is strong ties vs. weak ties

Answer 6

Strong ties are regular and face-to-face (high-density networks)
Weak ties are formed with those one does not know or knows poorly; intermittent (low density networks)

Question 7

What are clique networks?

Answer 7

• egalitarian
• motivated by strong ideological or cultural affinities
• demands a high degree of emotional involvement by participants
• high cost of maintenance of the structure
• high level of surveillance

Question 8

What is polycephaloous networks ?

Answer 8

(more than one head)
- decentralized around a few brokers
- segmented
- weak consensus
- no central command, leadership competition
- coalition (dependent on ties between leaders)

Question 9

What are wheel/star networks?

Answer 9

• highest degree of centralization
• no independent horizontal exchange not mediated by leadership
• fewest number of ties – therefore high efficiency/low cost
• weak commitment of participants to other participants; held together by central broker

Question 10

What are segmented networks?

Answer 10

• more competition than cooperation
• leadership rivalry
• inability to cooperate, even when faced with common tasks

Question 11

What is recruitment with personal networks? Who authored it? What is an example?

Answer 11

• it is the recruitment of strangers
• authored by Jasper (1999)
  Example: Animal Rights Movement
• relies on cultural symbolism and media that provokes moral outrage
• role of mail campaigns or media campaigns
• visuality is often important
• involves a weaker commitment to the movement
• forms of recruitment may influence the tactics that movements choose

Question 12

Who authored framing?

Answer 12

Goffman & Berger & Luckmann

Question 13

What is a frame?

Answer 13

A schema of interpretation that people rely on to understand reality.
- answer to the question of what is going on here
- simplify and selectively interpret reality
- involves keying or cueing

Question 14

Frames vs. framing?

Answer 14

Frames: refer to the actual schemata that people use to make sense of a situation
Framing: refers to the act of applying these schemata to concrete situations

Question 15

What are frames and framing applied to social movements?

Answer 15

1. the act by which individuals make sense of the political situation they confront (framing political opportunity)
2. how issues associated with mobilization are picked up and presented to the public by movements, governments, and media in order to key or cue particular responses

Question 16

Frames are a way _____

Answer 16

in which individuals make sense of political reality

Question 17

What are the three types of collective action frames?

Answer 17

1. identity frames (frames that tell individuals who they are)
2. injustice frames (frames indicating that there is a problem needing rectification)
3. agency frames (frames revolving around the ability to act on the problem)

Question 18

Frames are devices used by movements to ______

Answer 18

key or cue their target constituents (strategic framing)

movements construct messages aimed at mobilizing potential participants; these messages need to resonate with the beliefs of target audiences and provide them wi the motivation to act

Question 19

What Is frame articulation, frame amplification, frame resonance, and frame alignment?

Answer 19

Frame articulation: the choice among different cultural and situational elements

Frame amplification: highlighting or accentuating particular issues, events, or beliefs

Frame resonance: whether the collective action frame strikes a chord within target populations

Frame alignment: the process of adjusting frames to make them commensurate with popular beliefs, experience, and symbols

Question 20

Frames as ways in which the public is ___

Answer 20

cued and keyed by the media about what to believe about a movement
- mass media has enormous power in defining which protest events gain public attention and which do not, and how these events are treateed
- the media focus on events that are flamboyant, violent, and disruptive
- movements must produce events that are ‘newsworthy’ in order to attract media attention

Question 21

Movements and communications technologies

Answer 21

• print technologies and early emergence of social movement
• telegraph and the increased speed of diffusion along the nodes of communication
• radio as a technology reaching rural populations
• television as a technology that accentuates the visual but is highly centralized
• digital media: pluralization of the media environment

Question 22

What is the role of digital technologies?

Answer 22

• alter the speed in which information travels and breaks down
• facilitate entrants into the social movement field by lowering costs of communication, making it easier to overcome collective action problems
• facilitate publicizing acts of repression by authorities
• undermine hierarchy within movements

Question 23

What is the logic of connective action?

Answer 23

large-scale interpenetrated information networks allow large numbers of people who share common grievances or beliefs to find each other and coordinate action without a heavy organizational presence and without sharing common identities

• physical proximity becomes less important as cites of contention connected at distant points around the globe – fosters of a role of diffusion and of diasporas