Strengthening Qualitative Research Through Methodological Innovation and Integration: A New Approach to Understanding Social Movement Organizations

项目摘要：要理解社会变迁与弱势群体政治，首先要了解社会运动组织及其媒体报道。运动组织提供了寻求社会变革的关键资源，帮助构建政治身份和利益，并促进集体公民参与，学者们一致认为，大众新闻媒体的关注对挑战者的斗争至关重要，是他们影响力的标志。但是，对于运动组织在不同时期的兴起、衰落和持续存在的任何方面，都没有一个大的经验图景。为了填补这一主要空白，研究人员建议收集自19世纪90年代民粹主义运动以来，《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》、《芝加哥论坛报》和《洛杉矶时报》等全国性报纸上提到美国运动组织的文章的新数据。这些数据现在可以通过ProQuest Historical Newspapers获得，并将以电子方式收集。这些数据将使研究人员能够解决有关运动组织和家庭的几个基本问题：自19世纪90年代以来，哪些美国运动组织和家庭获得了最多的报纸报道？他们是运动奖学金让我们期待的那种人吗？覆盖率是如何随着时间和运动的变化而变化的？与标准的、有限的运动组织规模或活动指标（如组织密度、成员、资源动员和抗议事件）相比，覆盖率如何？在对运动组织的报道中，是否存在类似于对抗议事件报道的系统性偏见？覆盖率数据能否部分替代不易生成的数据？报道的历史轨迹与社会运动的主要理论一致吗？研究者将解决这些问题，并通过方法创新和整合评估运动的主要理论：通过综合历史调查，正式定性分析和时间序列回归。该项目最重要的影响之一将是首次长期绘制一个多世纪以来在公众意识中留下最深刻印记的运动和组织的地图。这幅运动组织的大图景将引起公众和决策者的极大兴趣。该项目还将通过与过去的禁酒令运动、劳工运动、民权运动等运动进行比较，促进对环境运动、女权运动、基督教权利运动等当今社会运动的理解。该项目还将推进社会理论、方法整合和研究生培训。

PI: Edwin AmentaTitle: Strengthening Qualitative Research Through Methodological Innovation and Integration: A New Approach to Understanding Social Movement OrganizationsSES-0752571Project AbstractTo understand social change and the politics of the disadvantaged one needs to understand social movement organizations and their media coverage. Movement organizations provide critical resources to seek social change, help to construct political identities and interests, and spur collective civic engagement, and scholars agree that the attention of the mass news media is critical to the struggles of challengers and is a mark of their influence. But there is no big empirical picture of any aspect of the rise, decline, and persistence of movement organizations across movements and over time. To fill this major gap, the investigators propose to collect new data on articles in which U.S. movement organizations were mentioned in national newspapers--the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times, since the populist movement of the 1890s. These data are now available through ProQuest Historical Newspapers and will be collected electronically. These data will allow the researchers to address several fundamental questions about movement organizations and families: Which U.S. movement organizations and families have received the greatest newspaper coverage since the 1890s? Are they the ones that movement scholarship would lead us to expect? How has coverage changed over time overall and across movements? How does coverage compare to standard, limited measures of movement organizational scale or activity, such as organizational density, membership, resource mobilization, and protest events? Are there systematic biases in coverage of movement organizations similar to the biases surrounding the coverage of protest events? Can coverage figures serve as a partial substitute for data much less easily generated? Are the historical trajectories of coverage consistent with the main theories of social movements? The investigators will address these questions and assess the main theories of movements through methodological innovation and integration: by synthesizing historical investigation, formal qualitative analyses, and time-series regression. One of the most important impacts of the project will be the first long-term mapping of the movements and organizations that have made the greatest imprints on the public consciousness over more than a century. This big picture of movement organizations will be of considerable interest to the general public and policymakers. The project will also promote greater understanding of today's social movements, such as the environmental, feminist, and Christian right movements through a comparison with past movements such as the prohibition, labor, and civil rights movements. The project will also advance social theory, methodological integration, and training of graduate students.