The Risk of Occupying a Broad Niche for Environmental Social Movement Organizations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Olzak ◽  
Erik W. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Environmental Social Movement

Coalitions and The Development of The Global Environmental Movement: A Double-Edged Sword

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Transnational Social Movements ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Environmental Social Movement

Censuses reveal an increasing prominence of coalition organizations within transnational social movements. However, the causes and implications of this change are unclear. Using original data on a population of transnational environmental social movement organizations, this research shows that coalition presence is a double-edged sword. While greater numbers of coalitions suggest movement expansion, empirical evidence suggests that this rise makes foundings of new organizations less likely.

THE RISK OF OCCUPYING A BROAD NICHE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATIONS*

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-198
Author(s):  
Susan Olzak ◽  
Erik W. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Survival Rate ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Organizational Survival ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Environmental Social Movement ◽  
Longitudinal Dataset ◽  
Landmark Study

Since Gamson's (1975) landmark study of social movement organizations, scholars have debated whether it is more advantageous to concentrate on a narrow or diverse set of issues. This paper recasts this debate in terms of organizational survival. Drawing on ideas from theories of category spanning and social movements, we argue that an organization that occupies a distinct niche conveys its purpose more effectively, which increases its chances of survival when compared to more diverse SMOs. Using a longitudinal dataset on environmental social movement organizations (ESMOs), we find organizations that span multiple and distant issue categories are significantly more likely to disband, compared to those with a more specialized focus. Other characteristics of ESMOs affect their survival rate in ways that are strikingly similar to for-profits and other types of nonprofits. Larger and more complex ESMOs benefit from economies of scale, while younger, less established organizations are more likely to perish.

scholarly journals Influence of the pandemic lockdown on Fridays for Future’s hashtag activism

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110265
Author(s):  
Jörg Haßler ◽  
Anna-Katharina Wurst ◽  
Marc Jungblut ◽  
Katharina Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
German Language ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Twitter Activity ◽  
Movement Organizations

Social movement organizations (SMOs) increasingly rely on Twitter to create new and viral communication spaces alongside newsworthy protest events and communicate their grievance directly to the public. When the COVID-19 pandemic impeded street protests in spring 2020, SMOs had to adapt their strategies to online-only formats. We analyze the German-language Twitter communication of the climate movement Fridays for Future (FFF) before and during the lockdown to explain how SMOs adapted their strategy under online-only conditions. We collected (re-)tweets containing the hashtag #fridaysforfuture ( N = 46,881 tweets, N = 225,562 retweets) and analyzed Twitter activity, use of hashtags, and predominant topics. Results show that although the number of tweets was already steadily declining before, it sharply dropped during the lockdown. Moreover, the use of hashtags changed substantially and tweets focused increasingly on thematic discourses and debates around the legitimacy of FFF, while tweets about protests and calls for mobilization decreased.

Exploiting a Crisis: Abortion Activism and the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kate Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Medical Procedure ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Movement Organizations

How do social movement organizations involved in abortion debates leverage a global crisis to pursue their goals? In recent months there has been media coverage of how anti-abortion actors in the United States attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict access to abortion by classifying abortion as a non-essential medical procedure. Was the crisis “exploited” by social movement organizations (SMOs) in other countries? I bring together Crisis Exploitation Theory and the concept of discursive opportunity structures to test whether social movement organizations exploit crisis in ways similar to elites, with those seeking change being more likely to capitalize on the opportunities provided by the crisis. Because Twitter tends to be on the frontlines of political debate—especially during a pandemic—a dataset is compiled of over 12,000 Tweets from the accounts of SMOs involved in abortion debates across four countries to analyze the patterns in how they responded to the pandemic. The results suggest that crisis may disrupt expectations about SMO behavior and that anti- and pro-abortion rights organizations at times framed the crisis as both a “threat” and as an “opportunity.”

scholarly journals The Organizational Trace of an Insurgent Moment

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 237802311770065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam D. Reich
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
York City ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Formal Organizations ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between social movements and formal organizations has long been a concern to scholars of collective action. Many have argued that social movement organizations (SMOs) provide resources that facilitate movement emergence, while others have highlighted the ways in which SMOs institutionalize or coopt movement goals. Through an examination of the relationship between Occupy Wall Street and the field of SMOs in New York City, this article illustrates a third possibility: that a moment of insurgency becomes a more enduring movement in part through the changes it induces in the relations among the SMOs in its orbit.

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