Strengthening Qualitative Research Through Methodological Innovation and Integration: Understanding Social Movement Organizations and Media Coverage

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SES-1023863Edwin AmentaUniversity of California-IrvineTo 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 ImpactsThe 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.