Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social movements'

This research seeks to explore Marian apparition movements as applied to movement success models. Among the numerous reports of the Virgin Mary appearing to the faithful, a select number of these experiences have developed into social movements. These movements take on similar patterns in their development and are contingent upon group involvement and support. This analysis researches how certain cases of Marian apparitions transition from lone psychic experience into a social movement and seeks to expand upon existing movement success models.

The thesis employs the political process approach within social movement theory (SMT) to examine in a comparative fashion two distinctly different opposition movements in southern Russia. One is the environmental movement in Krasnodar Krai and the other is the ethno-national Balkar movement in Kabardino-Balkaria. The political process approach focuses on the role and interaction of political opportunities, mobilising structures, and social movement framing for both movements, and seeks to explore their role in social movement mobilisation dynamics in Russia’s non-democratic context. The combination of the analysis of the three variables of political opportunities, mobilising structures, and social movement framing allows for fresh perspectives on both SMT and post-Soviet area studies. The thesis is particularly concerned with networks. It argues that in non-democratic contexts, the role of networks is more important than in democratic contexts.

Thesis (M.S. in Defense Analysis)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2006.
Thesis Advisor(s): Anna Simons, Christopher Twomey. "June 2006." Includes bibliographical references (p.61-63). Also available in print.

This study engaged in pushing the current political limitations created by the political impasse of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, by imagining new possibilities for radical political change, agency, and subjectivity for both the international activists volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement as well as Palestinians enduring the brutality of life under occupation. The role of the witness and testimony is brought to bear on activism and rhetoric the social movement ISM in Palestine. Approaches the past studies of the rhetoric of social movements arguing that rhetorical studies often disassociated 'social' from social movements, rendering invisible questions of the social and subjectivity from their frames for evaluation. Using the testimonies of these witnesses, Palestinians and activists, as the rhetorical production of the social movement, this study provides an effort to put the social body back into rhetorical studies of social movements. The relationships of subjectivity and desubjectification, as well as, possession of subjects by agency and the role of the witness with each of these is discussed in terms of Palestinian and activist potential for subjectification and desubjectifiation.

This thesis examines the continuing significance in contemporary Italy of the Italian new social movement of 1973-83, Autonomia, by positing it as a movement of refusal: of capitalist work, of the party form, of the clandestine form of political violence, and of the politics of 'taking power'. It was in discontinuity with the value systems of the reformist Old Left and the revolutionary New Left, but in continuity with contemporary Italian antagonist and global anti-capitalist movements. In defining the research subject, the concept of individual and collective autonomy emerges as a central characteristic of the Italian new social movements. Autonomy is understood not only as independence from the capitalist State and economy and their institutions of mediation, but also as the self-determination of everyday life, related to the needs, desires and subjectivity of what Italian 'workerism' defined as the Fordist 'mass worker' and the post-Fordist 'socialised worker'. Using the 'class composition' theoretical perspective of Autonomist Marxism to critique classical Marxism, neo-Marxism and new social movement theory's minimalisation of the political content of new social movements and dismissive analysis of Autonomia, the scope of research was limited to the interpretation of 48 interviews of former participants and observers, of primary texts produced by Autonomia and of secondary accounts based on 'collective historical memory'. The thematic framework consists of chapters on workers' autonomy and the refusal of work; forms of political organisation and violence involving 'organised', 'diffused' and 'armed' Autonomia; and on the youth counter-cultures and antagonist communication of 'creative Autonomia' and the 1977 Movement. The thesis concludes that Autonomia expressed the violent social conflicts produced by the rapid transformation of an industrial into a post-industrial society, but ultimately was only a partial break from the traditions and practices of the Old and New Lefts, leaving an ambiguous legacy for contemporary Italian autonomous social movements.

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This thesis questions in what ways two major social movements, the Student Movement in 1999 and Green Movement in 2009, affected Iranian domestic politics. It argues that, although these movements seemed to fail, they succeeded in important ways. Essentially, these movements altered domestic politics by their emergence and resilient continuity as an alternative way of political participation for Iranians. The result of their continuation and expansion encouraged, and continues to encourage, more liberal tendencies. These movements occurred since the 1979 Iranian revolution, itself, planted their seeds in post-revolutionary Iran by its outcomes, which created political opportunities, mobilizing structures, resources, and framing. Social movements became an alternative way of political participation, beginning from the Student Movement, and initiated the early changes in public opinion for a more liberal regime in 1999. Although the Iranian government brutally suppressed the Student Movement, its participants continued their struggle. The Green Movement in 2009 was a pro-democracy movement that united separate opposition groups in society, with broader frames and peaceful tactics, as a continuance of the Student Movement. It arguably shook the Islamic governments legitimacy and changed Iranians opinion, which was reflected in the election of a reformist candidate in the 2013 presidential elections.

My research interest is to understand consumer behavior related to transnationalism. In this dissertation, I address three questions concerning consumption and transnationalism. First, I situate transnationalism within the extensive body of work in consumer culture theory on globalization. Second, I examine one aspect of transnationalism: transnational consumer lifestyle that characterizes the lifestyle of individuals who simultaneously work and/or live in multiple countries (Glick Schiller et al. 1999). This is an interesting context to re-examine important consumer behavior phenomena, including consumer acculturation, relationship to home in contemporary globalization, and the role of consumption in managing a fragmented and multicentered life. Third, I examine another aspect of transnationalism: transnational consumer movement facilitated by transnational digital spaces. Transnational digital spaces, such as social media platforms, facilitate connections between activists, transnational news agencies, and political and social figures and institutions across borders and have the potential to empower some consumers, specifically those in totalitarian societies. I believe these are important phenomena that shape contemporary global consumer culture, but they have received little attention in consumer research thus far.

This is the first focused study of the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood, the most influential and organised social and political movement in Kuwait, from its beginnings in 1946up to2000. It focuses on the circumstances surrounding the emergence and development of the Muslim Brotherhood as part of a general Islamic revival in Kuwait. It argues that the Muslim Brotherhood was driven first and foremost by cultural considerations and that Kuwaiti secularists regarded it as a challenge to their growing influence in both the political domain (traditionally controlled by the ruling family) and the social domain (historically under the control of the religious establishment). The resulting conflict with secularists over the social domain posed a serious threat to the Muslim Brotherhood who considered themselves an extension of the traditional religious establishment. They also viewed the secularists’ attempts to reshape Kuwaiti identity as a threat to Kuwait’s Islamic identity. This prompted the Muslim Brotherhood to channel all their social, educational and political efforts towards reclaiming the social domain. This study focuses also on the mechanisms adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood, ones which combined Islamic values with modern mobilisation strategies producing a dynamic Islamist movement seeking to revive the golden age of Islam through modern means. The movement maintained a pyramid hierarchy and it refashioned modern economic theory to make it more compatible with Islamic teachings. It also established a Muslim Boy Scouts movement and an Islamic press, while it reformed other organisations to make them compatible with Islamic values. All this was done in an effort to implement Hasan al-Banna’s vision of fashioning a pious Muslim individual, a virtuous family and, finally, a true Muslim state. The Muslim Brotherhood’s comprehensive and sweeping agenda seeks the complete transformation of social conditions. The Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait was not very different from its mother organisation in Egypt. It played a pioneering role in revising Islamic banking, developing charity work and challenging secularism. The Kuwaiti political system supported the Muslim Brotherhood in its struggle against secularists, but the Muslim Brotherhood nonetheless stayed out of politics, focusing on rehabilitating the social domain, in the interests of maintaining on good terms with the ruling family.

The global wave of mobilisations that took place after the 2008 financial crisis prompted social movement scholars and radical thinkers to highlight the ability of social actors to resist capitalism and develop new forms of radical democracy. This initial moment of 'effervescence' has been followed by a longer period of balance and critical evaluation. In this context, critical theorists have welcomed the renewal of social critique after a long period of withdrawal and the enunciation of a post-critical era. However, this renewal has taken place at the expense of critical theory's social significance. In this work, I propose a productive cross-fertilisation of the various realms in which the social critique of capitalism has (separately) taken place: critical social theory and practices of social criticism carried out by social movements. Drawing on Fredric Jameson's notion of an 'aesthetic of cognitive mapping' and on Luc Boltanski's critical sociology, the thesis argues that the affinities between the two forms of critique provide a basis upon which a politically and theoretically productive articulation might be built. In the first part, I explore four different styles of theoretical critique - from David Harvey to Luc Boltanski - highlighting their merits and limitations. In the second part, I delve into the practices of criticism of capitalist society carried out by two Chilean social movements: the pobladores' movement and the student movement, respectively, in order to explore how social critique is performed in the context of concrete social struggles. Pobladores and students have been resisting, mapping, and contesting neoliberal policies in Chile since the beginning of the 2000s, actualising old practices of resistance in a new and fragmented social context. By disclosing the affinities between the practices of social critique at both levels, I contend that critical theorists can learn from social movements' descriptions and explanations, and thus rehabilitate its political emancipatory dimension.

The main objective of this study is to provide an in-depth analysis the association between a set of social structural factors and the certain types of social movement events in Turkey. The changing nature and significance of social movements over time and space makes this study necessary to understand and explain new trends related to the parameters that constitute a backdrop for social movements. Social movements are a very common mechanism used by groups of people who decide to take action against an unfair socio-political system, usually an authoritarian government or dictatorship. This kind of reactions, seen in history before, gives birth to a more multidimensional understanding of the relationship between society and state policies. Understanding social movements depends on understanding our own societies, and the social environment in which they are developed. An effective way of understanding this type of social movements is to recognize the perceived concerns of discontented groups in relation to cultural, ideological, economic, and political institutions and values. Social movement events included in the study refers to collective activities organized by two or more people with the purpose of protesting public policies or of increasing public awareness about certain social issues related to human rights and freedoms, environment, feminism, etc. All these types of events are chased by police forces, and their concerns, statements, and activities are recorded.

Our daily online conversations with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers weave an intricate network of interactions. From these networked discussions emerge themes and topics that transcend the scope of any individual conversation. In turn, these themes direct the discourse of the network and continue to ebb and flow as the interactions between individuals shape the topics themselves. This rich loop between interpersonal conversations and overarching topics is a wonderful example of a complex system: the themes of a discussion are more than just the sum of its parts. Some of the most socially relevant topics emerging from these online conversations are those pertaining to racial justice issues. Since the shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by White police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, the protest hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has amplified critiques of extrajudicial shootings of Black Americans. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, other online users have adopted #AllLivesMatter, a counter-protest hashtag whose content argues that equal attention should be given to all lives regardless of race. Together these contentious hashtags each shape clashing narratives that echo previous civil rights battles and illustrate ongoing racial tension between police officers and Black Americans. These narratives have taken place on a massive scale with millions of online posts and articles debating the sentiments of "black lives matter" and "all lives matter." Since no one person could possibly read everything written in this debate, comprehensively understanding these conversations and their underlying networks requires us to leverage tools from data science, machine learning, and natural language processing. In Chapter 2, we utilize methodology from network science to measure to what extent #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter are "slacktivist" movements, and the effect this has on the diversity of topics discussed within these hashtags. In Chapter 3, we precisely quantify the ways in which the discourse of #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter diverge through the application of information-theoretic techniques, validating our results at the topic level from Chapter 2. These entropy-based approaches provide the foundation for powerful automated analysis of textual data, and we explore more generally how they can be used to construct a human-in-the-loop topic model in Chapter 4. Our work demonstrates that there is rich potential for weaving together social science domain knowledge with computational tools in the study of language, networks, and social movements.

For a long time, the world experiences a permanent increase in wealth inequality. While the bottom half of the world's population shares less than 1 percent of the world's wealth, the top ten percent owns 89 percent of the total assets in the world (Suisse, 2016). Among many other things, widespread poverty and starvation are just two consequences of this fact. Unfortunately, the concentration of the wealth causes many other socioeconomic problems. For instance, as competition increases, producers reduce the cost of production in return of unemployment and poor working conditions. Young unemployment leads to depression which constitutes a major threat to the young generation. On the other hand, each day more workers have been losing their lives due to the lack of measures in the workplaces. Another example is the armed conflicts spread worldwide. Although it is hard to find the real owners of the armament manufacturers, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute(SIPRA) Arms Industry Database, the leading companies are based in USA, Russia, UK, and France. Due to the armed conflicts, millions of people have forced to leave their homes, squeezed between borders and many died on the way. Even worse, 'developed' countries which host the producers of weapons handle this fact just as a migration problem. \\ These are only a few of the many problems experienced in the world today. Day after day, the system generates deeper social, political and economic destructions. Until now, I have described only one side of a coin. On the other side, since Hegel, it is explicitly known that each fact or situation reveals its own contradiction. Social processes are not exceptions. In this sense, destruction can only exist with opportunities for recreation. Almost in all regions, local or extensive protests emerge against several problems. Some are taking the form of political reaction, others are as movement organizations or spontaneous street movements. The literature on social movements or relevant issues is dominated by the discussions on why and how these movements emerge and survive or fade. In such a world filled with inequality, a world becoming more destructive for crowds on behalf of a few group of people's interest, there is another relevant aspect of the same discussion: Why the crowds are not able to change this situation? Although there are many organized movements today, why are these organizations poor in stopping this destructive process? Accordingly, not only the existence of movements but also the absence of them is significant. Moreover, a broader analysis of social movements requires to examine them as complementary. Although the structural conditions are significant to compare these two, I prefer to focus also on relational aspect. In this sense, I use micro-structural approach. Communication processes are bridging perspective for micro and macro levels and network theory is at the center of the discussions in this thesis. Correspondingly, social movements are considered as products of communication processes. The network mechanism has been criticized being local in construction. On the contrary, previous studies show the capacity of this mechanism in explaining many global phenomena. Several examples are discussed in the first chapter. Also, the basic definitions and representations used in the rest of the study are introduced in this chapter. The second chapter turns to social movements. The traditional theories of the social movements are reviewed from a critical perspective. The current developments on the subject are discussed. In fact, the necessity of a new perspective has been discussed in the plenty of current studies. The search of a new perspective is also the main motivation of this thesis. In the light of this, the second chapter discusses why network theory is promising as a new methodology for social movements. The existence of conflicting identities rests at the heart of the analysis. At the end of the chapter, a general perspective is introduced. I construct two different models in the following two chapters so as to study different aspects. The first one examines the possible network structures in case of the interaction of conflicting identities. In the third chapter, a standard communication network is modified by including heterogeneity in benefits received from direct connections. Moreover, benefits of indirect connections also modified. The extension includes the differentiation on benefit one gets from an indirect connection depending on the type of connector. It is found that, like standard connection model, the network externalities generate discrepancy between stability and efficiency. The fourth chapter is an application of the mechanism described in the second chapter. I discuss the structures under which agents are willing to use interaction as a resource for action against opposition. Information dominance and size dominance are introduced as two main tools for the decision-making process. Whenever various and complex identity structures exist, multilayer analysis is necessary. The network structures generating mobilization acts are examined under the definition of mobilization as a value transfer between opposites. The thesis is concluded with a brief summary of main findings and a discussion on further analysis. This thesis is an attempt to contribute to growing literature using a network approach to analyze social movements. In this sense, I present a general mechanism on how to use the network approach to analyze social conflicts and movements. Furthermore, as far as we know, it is one of the few studies working network theory with a dialectic methodology.

This thesis investigates the English student movement between the years of 1965 and 1973, offering the first sustained exploration of this 'case study' of a particular type of social movement, i.e. movements of students. The research looks at this movement in relation to social movement theories, as a sociological explanation for this historical movement is sought. New , social movement theory has long been viewed and accepted by some scholars as the explanatory theory for movements such as student movements that were emerging since the 1960s. However, in this thesis I challenge this assumed dominance of New Social Movement theory in relation to the English student movement, arguing that complex social movements may require more holistic explanations in order to fully understand the features and attributes that comprise these movements. The English student movement was a complex and varied movement, with its specificities often relating to location, thus any explanation of the movement needs to be able to grant flexibility to the variances as well as the commonalities present. Sociological attention has been limited in relation to the English student movement, even though the English student movement was significant within the history of our universities as well as broader English radical traditions and left wing actions. This thesis thus attempts to right that lack of attention in some small way, making use of previously unused documentary sources and documenting the voices of those involved within the English student movement before the details of the events are consigned even further to the realms of history. The thesis looks at two stories of the movement, stressing "the importance of full understanding and theorising accordingly. The use of a theoretical synthesis, fundamentally drawing upon the work of Canel (1992), is employed in order to understand the empricial exploration of this movement. This thesis offers an orginal contribution to the understanding of the English student movement, via grounding in empirical data and sustained sociological explanation.

This dissertation investigates emotional contagion in social movements within social media platforms, such as Twitter. The main research question is: How does a protest behavior spread in social networks? The following sub-questions are: (a) What is the dynamic behind the anger contagion in online social networks? (b) What are the key variables for ensuring emotional spread? We gained access to Twitter data sets on protests in Charlotte, NC (2016) and Charlottesville, VA (2017). Although these two protests differ in their triggering points, they have similarities in their macro behaviors during the peak protest times. To understand the influence of anger spread among users, we extracted user mention networks from the data sets. Most of the mentioned users are influential ones, who have a significant number of followers. This shows that influential users occur as the highest in-degree nodes in the core of the networks, and a change in these nodes affects all connected public users/nodes. Then, we examined modularity measures quite high within users’ own communities. After implementing the networks, we ran experiments on the anger spread according to various theories with two main assumptions: (1) Anger is the triggering emotion for protests and (2) Twitter mentions affect distribution of influence in social networks. We found that user connections with directed links are essential for the spread of influence and anger; i.e., the angriest users are the most isolated ones with less number of followers, which signifies their low impact level in the network.

In this thesis I assessed the state responses to social movements and in turn the impact of these movements on state policy within the context of the democratization occurring in Bolivia. The democratization process is affected by the conflict between political and economic goals. Politically the governments are faced with the demands from social groups. At the same time, the Bolivian government faces an economic crisis which requires stabilization, impairing the same individuals needed for legitimacy and political support. Two cases which depicted the key issues of this thesis are: the indigenous groups in the Bolivian Beni region and the coca growers, mainly of the Chapare area in the Cochabamba department of Bolivia. To achieve support and legitimacy, the new civilian administrations had no choice but to listen to the requests of the social mobilizations. Because of the economic crisis, conflicting domestic pressures and international influence, however, the government could not accede to all their demands.

Les jeunes environnementalistes, en cherchant une concordance et une cohérence entre leurs styles de vie et leurs idéaux, entre leurs pratiques individuelles et la collectivité dont ils sont membres, parviennent à créer et adopter des pratiques démocratiques alternatives et innovatrices. Ces jeunes feraient alors de leur vie et de leur quotidien une oeuvre politique. Ainsi, par leur profonde remise en question (et dans certain cas, leur plus décisif rejet) de la politique institutionnelle, les jeunes écolos parviendraient, par leur engagement politique différencie, à rendre compte du caractère poreux des frontières du politique. Cette thèse est une étude de jeunes membres de groupes environnementaux à Ottawa, et de leur participation dans ces groupes, permettant de mieux comprendre comment ils font de la politique autrement, d'une part par la forme et le lieu de leur engagement et d'autre part l'expérimentation de nouvelles formes de démocraties et de pratiques démocratiques alternatives.

It is often said that many of the canonical rights we enjoy today are the achievement of past political struggle. While these struggles are typically invoked as a source of political inspiration, this thesis argues that they are also key to understanding the nature and significance of rights as a philosophical concept. The thesis marks a new contribution to the literature on rights, which is predominantly oriented to the formal analysis of rights in relation to the law and to their achievement and enforcement through the institutions of the constitutional state. Part I of the thesis sets out and defends an activist theory of rights that explains the special value the concept has as claims that empower agents with the moral standing to challenge and replace unjust laws, institutions and social practices according to critical moral norms. Part II uses the activist theory of rights as a framework to examine the strengths and weaknesses of four influential models of rights politics: the juridical model of Ronald Dworkin; the parliamentary model of Jeremy Waldron and Richard Bellamy; the liberal civil disobedience model of John Rawls, and the radical critique of rights from within the Marxian tradition. The evaluation of these four models generates an argument in support of the legitimacy and effectiveness of activist citizenship for the achievement and enforcement of rights on the basis of democratic inclusion, moral innovation and civic education. Part III of the thesis provides an illustration of activist citizenship taken from a contemporary squatting movement centered on the right to housing, ‘Take Back the Land’. In exercising the moral right to housing, for which they demand political recognition, the group’s practices reflect the adversarial dimension of rights in keeping with the concept’s historical role in empowering subordinate groups to challenge unjust relations of power and inequality.

It is hard to deny that how Information and Communication Technologies are used by social movements is an issue of great importance. However, it is equally difficult to ascribe meaning to such use - it remains a contested topic within academia and in popular media. In this thesis I develop, demonstrate, and test a unique approach to studying ICT use in social movements which is informed by complexity theory and phronetic social science.

This dissertation wishes to contribute to the sociological debate on protest movements by developing the notion of ‘contentious branding’ as a reflection emerging from the digital exploration of two empirical cases that challenge social movement theory: Occupy and Anonymous. The research was orientated by three interrelated questions operating at a methodological, empirical and theoretical level: How can digital research remediate the study of social movements? What sort of assemblages are articulated around the contentious brands Occupy and Anonymous? How does a branding perspective add to or amend traditional theories of social movements? The argument is built on a complexity-orientated epistemological background, interweaving insights derived from assemblage theory, actor-network theory, socio-semiotics and second-order cybernetics. The empirical research has been undertaken by means of digital techniques: Application Programming Interfaces of popular social media (mostly, Twitter and Facebook) have been pulled for data; the #Occupy and #Anonymous hashtags have been employed as research devices to set the limit of the analysis; and the datasets have been explored mostly by means of network analysis and computer-assisted content analysis techniques. The core contribution of the dissertation is to introduce and develop, within the field of social movement theory, the notion of ‘contentious branding’, to cope with the theoretical challenges highlighted by the empirical sections. A branding perspective on social movements not only fits these specific cases better: it intends to provide an epistemological and methodological device, to sustain a non-essentialist understanding of social movements, especially in the cases of digitalization of empirical phenomena and research methods.
This dissertation wishes to contribute to the sociological debate on protest movements by developing the notion of ‘contentious branding’ as a reflection emerging from the digital exploration of two empirical cases that challenge social movement theory: Occupy and Anonymous. The research was orientated by three interrelated questions operating at a methodological, empirical and theoretical level: How can digital research remediate the study of social movements? What sort of assemblages are articulated around the contentious brands Occupy and Anonymous? How does a branding perspective add to or amend traditional theories of social movements? The argument is built on a complexity-orientated epistemological background, interweaving insights derived from assemblage theory, actor-network theory, socio-semiotics and second-order cybernetics. The empirical research has been undertaken by means of digital techniques: Application Programming Interfaces of popular social media (mostly, Twitter and Facebook) have been pulled for data; the #Occupy and #Anonymous hashtags have been employed as research devices to set the limit of the analysis; and the datasets have been explored mostly by means of network analysis and computer-assisted content analysis techniques. The core contribution of the dissertation is to introduce and develop, within the field of social movement theory, the notion of ‘contentious branding’, to cope with the theoretical challenges highlighted by the empirical sections. A branding perspective on social movements not only fits these specific cases better: it intends to provide an epistemological and methodological device, to sustain a non-essentialist understanding of social movements, especially in the cases of digitalization of empirical phenomena and research methods. Chapter 2 (‘Social movements, signification and branding processes’) presents a literature review of theories of social movements, semiotics and branding. The first section is a brief historical review of the main families of theory that deal with social movements, highlighting their strengths and limitations, especially with respect to ‘digitally-mediated’ movements. This section starts by introducing earlier socio-psychological perspectives and rationalist models of collective action, then moves to ‘classical’ approaches that focus on resource mobilization and political opportunities, framing processes and collective identities in ‘new movements’. Subsequently, it presents the recent trends in the field, which emphasize emotions, geography and networks as key concepts. After this, a brief review of the relation between new movements and new media is provided. To conclude, the section develops the argument that the discourse on social movements is articulated around a divide between different approaches: in particular, what will be defined as the ‘means-oriented’ versus ‘meanings-oriented’ divide. The need to do away with dualist attitudes is justified by reference to both epistemological considerations and empirical observations. The aims of the second section are the following. First, it introduces the basic semiotic definitions and processes relevant for the rest of the work; in particular, the distinction between the signifier and the signified, the recursive character of signification and the idea of infinite semiotic chains, that together constitute sign systems as topologically recursive. Second, merging insights from semiotics with ecological communication theory, the section will introduce the idea of a ‘bending effect’ that media produce on sign systems. Finally, the relation between semiotics and politics will be discussed, highlighting both the inherent political character of signification processes and the symbolic dimension of power/counter-power dynamics. The third section seeks to legitimize the translation of the process known as ‘branding’ to the field of social movements and contentious politics. Brands originated in the rise of mass production and have become crucial institutions in the context of global informational capitalism. While they can be denotatively defined as semiotic elements that allow for the recognition of something, their connotative definition is more controversial, because they are both the outcome of ‘top-down’ strategic devices of management and ‘bottom-up’ emergent cultural expressions of publics. Whereas branding is classically associated with products and companies, nowadays ‘place branding’, ‘political branding’ and ‘personal branding’ have become established fields of research: everything can be an object of recognition, thus everything can be branded. Given their peculiar ontological heterogeneity, openness and modularity, brands can be paradigmatically depicted as assemblages that capture and articulate diverse meanings. While the proposal to juxtapose branding and social movements may sound provocative, so-called ‘movement marketing’ already conceptualizes social mobilizations as driving forces for market innovations and brands' success, while, more relevantly, theories of social movements have already started to transgress this semantic boundary. The chapter ends by proposing a heuristic distinction between ‘orders of contention’, which will serve as a prism for the analysis of the empirical cases: the syntax, the semantic and the ethic of contention. A key proposition for the overall argument states that contentious branding highlights the role that the syntax of contention plays in shaping a blurred ethic of contention, thus articulating a potentially diverse semantic. Chapter 3 (‘Occupy What?’) tries to analytically isolate the Occupy ‘contentious brand’ from the Occupy ‘social movement’, through the means of empirical data and examples. It argues that the peculiar relation between the means and the meanings characterizing this empirical case suggests this epistemological move, useful in order to have a better grip on the challenging fluidity of the movement’s semantic, spatial and temporal boundaries. The research questions leading the analysis can be formulated as: Occupy what? The first section presents a phenomenological assessment of the associations of the Occupy brand, following three dimensions: semantic (Occupy what?), spatial (Occupy where?) and temporal (Occupy when?). First, it reconstructs the overall variations of the #Occupy meta-hashtag, showing that a marker related to a specific target and event undergoes countless processes of re-semantization, following a number of dimensions. Then, it looks in-depth at the spatial properties of the movement/s, proposing various analyses of the complex geography behind and between the digital and the physical presence of Occupy. Finally, the section enlarges the temporal span in order to show the persistence of the contentious brand beyond the momentum of the specific movement, presenting some of the initiatives that have reiterated a reference to Occupy in recent years. The overall aim is to provide empirical evidence for the need to conceive of an abstract entity, ‘contentious brands’, that are analytically autonomous from what is commonly referred to as ‘social movements’. The next section presents and analyses the distinctive features of the Occupy movement/s, both in organizational and identitary terms. The expression ‘Occupy’ here refers to the protest wave that, in late 2011, originated in Zuccotti Park, New York, and spread all over the world, bringing together a number of local networks sharing the following elements: the practice of the occupation of public spaces; the intensive adoption of social media; the project of identity (‘we are the 99%’); loose claims of economic justice developing into much more heterogeneous goals. After a presentation of the origins of the Occupy epidemic, each of these elements is covered in a specific paragraph; the argument, though, specifically pertains to the need to understand their inter-relatedness and the resulting subversion of the relation between the ‘form’ and the ‘substance’ of this entity, which is explicitly sought by Occupy activists. This chapter aims at contributing to the debate on contemporary social movements, by suggesting the relevance of the dimension of branding for understanding the peculiarities of the ‘Occupy entity’ as a whole, as well as for tackling the challenges related to the analytical delimitation of the boundaries of the movement/s. The conclusion contends that Occupy manifests a rearticulation of the relation between the means and the meanings of protest. Local movements from all over the world have seized the opportunity to hook up flows of solidarity and visibility, replicating the same protest tactic directly denoted by the label ‘Occupy’, purposefully developed as an open container for yet-to-specify grievances. The case that is the object of Chapter 4 (‘Unfolding Anonymous’) approximates to a greater extent the ideal-type of contentious branding. Scholars and commentators have adopted a plethora of expressions to refer to Anonymous, ranging from the more demanding terms to more cautious formulations: a ‘social movement’, a ‘hacktivist collective’, a ‘loosely associated protest network’, an ‘internet phenomenon’, and a ‘collective label’. Consequently, a straightforward question arises: what is Anonymous? The proposal of this work is to characterize Anonymous as a ‘contentious brand’, which means focusing on the connective potential related to its standardized semiotic repertoire. Methodologically, the chapter adopts a structural-relational perspective, involving exploiting Twitter data. The general goal is to show empirically the limits and contradictions related to conceiving of Anonymous as an individual social movement; the alternative proposal is to interpret Anonymous as a ‘contentious brand’ appropriated by and interacting with various mobilizations. The first section of the chapter focuses on the structural properties of the network of interactions between users whose activity is branded as being related to Anonymous. The goal is to understand to what extent Anonymous can be analyzed as a single network, either maintaining a certain structure over time or involved in an overall process of evolution. This section focuses on the structural evolution of the network of interactions between users. It concentrates on patterns of stability, compactness and centralization, showing how the network surrounding the hashtag #Anonymous on Twitter demonstrates oscillating behavior. The second section moves to the ‘semantic’ level of social movement goals and issues of concern, it elaborates on the hashtags included in the Twitter corpus already presented. In particular, the focus will be on the hashtags related to Anonymous operations. The aim is to understand whether a core mission of Anonymous can be isolated – e.g. the fight for internet freedom. The hashtags related to operations are mapped and aggregated in order to propose a heuristic categorization of the many, distinct ‘souls’ behind Anonymous activism, each characterized by quite divergent goals, targets and concerns. The observation of the dynamics of operations leads to the conclusion that there is no dominant issue, or set of issues, which is stable across time; conversely, Anonymous targets are always shifting, and users’ flows sometimes converge on specific issues, while at other times they diverge toward heterogeneous targets. The various operations are structurally connected due to a minority of users flowing from operation to operation, though each operation presents a largely independent constituency. Anonymous has often intertwined its destiny with other organizations, mobilizations and causes, promoting campaigns that were found worthy of its endorsement. Interestingly, a number of more or less related offshoots have arisen. This section intends to shed a light on the peculiar process of ‘brand variation’, by assessing the structural relation between Anonymous as a whole and its many offshoots; this is meant to highlight the role of Anonymous as an ‘umbrella brand’ for largely autonomous mobilizations. Matching the dataset of users and hashtags for recurring matching sub-terms results in a list of ‘sub-brands’, some of which are minor variations of the word ‘Anonymous’ with a more connoted meaning, while some are external groups with which Anonymous has collaborated, and others are more ambiguous entities, partially distinct and partially overlapping with Anonymous. These offshoots re-brand themselves to mark their specificity, though they maintain a more or less direct symbolic reference to the Anonymous brand. The analysis of the users’ overlap reveals that whereas few broker users connect most of the offshoots together, these offshoots are largely independent in terms of the long tail of users. The focus on the Million Mask March offshoot shows that, despite its strong symbolic association with Anonymous, consistent modules of the Anonymous network have been almost untouched by the march of 5 November 2013, which took place worldwide. Altogether, these observations suggest the distinctive role of Anonymous as an ‘umbrella brand’ involved in a process of ‘brand differentiation’. This chapter argues that it is problematic to try to observe Anonymous through the lens of categories that are classically associated with social movements, for many reasons – related to the complex and counterintuitive articulation of this entity. This work wants instead to put into focus the dimension of contentious branding: unfolding the assemblage traced by the ‘Anonymous signifier’, instead of uncovering the essence of Anonymous, allows us to have a better grasp of the ontological status of the entity named Anonymous. The aim of Chapter 5 (‘Dividing by zero’) is to unveil the distinctive Anonymous identity by asking the following question: who is Anonymous? This question is answered by analyzing a vast corpus of Facebook pages, mainly by digging into the massive textual data they provide. The first section answers the question ‘who is Anonymous?’, focusing on the orientations that can be identified from the network of pages liked by Anonymous pages. It shows how Anonymous orientations are not only extremely heterogeneous, but also that they are often incoherent or even openly contradictory, manifesting a clear schizophrenic identity. To make this claim apparent, the involvement of Anonymous in the Ukrainian and Venezuelan political crises is briefly presented, showing how its brand is recalled from ‘both sides of a barricade’. To sustain this argument further, another part compares radical left-wing and radical right-wing manifestations of the Anonymous brand –RedHack and Anonymous Patriot– as well as the position allegedly expressed by Anonymous in support of, and against, the conservative and progressive US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The section concludes by presenting a radically counterintuitive aspect: not only are directly opposing utilizations of the brand documentable, but also the page-to-page network testifies that contradicting pages are indirectly connected through relationships of ‘likes’. The resulting ‘schizophrenic’ character of Anonymous orientations may be related to a ‘masking effect’ that the standard visual identity of the brand produces on the actual semantic content of its adoptions. The second section focuses on the recurrent controversies present in the textual corpus, connected with the question of who – individual or collective actor – is ‘really Anonymous’ and can thus legitimately claim its identity, according to Anons’ own words. This means observing cases of discursive production of the boundaries of Anonymous and the recurrent inauthenticity claims. The first, oldest divide is between ‘oldfags’, loyal to a purely recreational adoption of the brand, and ‘newfags’, which redefined Anonymous’ mission as a fight for the good. Second, in order to be part of Anonymous, many Anons would say, you have to give up your personal identity; but many Anonymous activists do not conceal their names and faces anymore, and temporary leaders have always emerged in Anonymous’ history. One of the recurrent (non-)rules defining authentic Anonymous actions is to never attack the media, despite the media being a primal enemy and, indeed, often a target. Anonymous, for its own definition, does not have a fixed character; rather, it takes the emergent form that those who join wants it to take. Analogously, there are no standard procedures for joining: anybody can be Anonymous, without the need for approval or specific knowledge or skills. In a sense, thus, everybody is Anonymous and, at the same time, nobody is really Anonymous. The continuous allegations show, however, that sometimes someone is not Anonymous. For these reasons, nothing can be an ‘official’ manifestation of Anonymous, but the need to mark the authenticity of a group surrounded by dozens of ‘imitations’ leads many to adopt this label, with the paradoxical effect of attracting accusations of inauthenticity. The third and final part of this section, alongside presenting exemplificative cases, pulls the threads of the argument: it is the distinction between the authentic and the fake, the original and the copy, which fails when applied to an object like Anonymous. The last empirical section intends to ‘ask’ the corpus of Anonymous’ posts and comments for spontaneous declarations concerning its own ontological nature: who is Anonymous, in the sense of what are the constitutive elements of Anonymous’ identity? Anonymous, first, is a legion: it is not properly one unified entity, nor simply the juxtaposition of many groups; rather, it manifests as the co-presence of different souls that refuse to be captured. Anonymous, however, is also a family: the many diverging opinions and the recurrent infights do not compromise a strong sense of ‘we’-ness and unity, which is actively pursued and deemed as vital. Anonymous, in Anons’ own words, has a peculiar ontological character, since it is not a group in the conventional sense, nor even something that really exists: it is an abstract idea that can be incarnated in different forms. Anonymous is, moreover, an incoherent machine: the heterogeneity and contradictions between its manifestations, as well as the systematic mismatch between its declarations and its behavior, are anticipated in its own definition. These dimensions altogether make evident how the essence of Anonymous lies in its inessential character. This chapter’s main contribution is to suggest that, from a cybernetic perspective, Anonymous counterbalances schismogenesis by explicitly defining itself in terms of tautologies and paradoxes, thus embracing a radical pattern of recursion. Anonymous’ contentious brand, from this point of view, acts as a meta-level capable of integrating contradictory orientations by anticipating its own schizophrenic character, turning the conditions of its dismantling into the conditions of its reproduction. The conclusions pull together the arguments advanced in the previous chapters in three lines of reasoning: the analytical autonomy of branding from other social movements processes and its role in supporting a non-essentialist, material-semiotic understanding of social movements; the role of contentious branding in older, pre-digital movements and the specificity of digitally-mediated contentious branding; the relation between the connective and collective levels of organization and identity, and the recursive relation between the means and meanings of contention. The concluding chapter’s first section tries to bring conceptual clarity. It first assesses the relation between branding and various social movement processes studied in the literature and then ventures a definition of branding based on the idea of movements-as-multiplicities and on a material-semiotic understanding of social movements. The chapter’s second section asks whether branding is distinctive to the digitally-mediated contentious entities studied in this dissertation or more generally a part of social movements as such. I argue that Occupy and Anonymous foreground properties that, with a reflexive epistemology, can be seen in classical, pre-digital mobilizations as well. The role of digital media in foregrounding the branding process should not only be sought in the remediation of social movement dynamics but also, following a principle of epistemological symmetry, in the research affordances that digital tools provide to social movement research. The focus on branding generates two hypotheses that bear on the media-movement debate, to be developed and assessed in future work: the role of branding as catalyst and as refractor of contentious processes. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how social movements are reassembled in the network society: moving from reflexivity towards recursion. Enabled by the affordances of digital media to bring their complexities to the surface, Occupy and Anonymous abstract a meta-level of contention to compensate for their ideological fragmentation and the non-intelligibility of contemporary forms of domination.

En accord avec l’intérêt récent porté aux mouvements sociaux dans la théorie des organisations et la littérature des systèmes d’information et face à la numérisation croissante des sociétés, j’adopte dans cette thèse de doctorat une perspective performative et post-humaniste pour étudier la matérialisation des mouvements sociaux avec, à travers et par les médias sociaux. Cette thèse doctorale contribue à la littérature organisationnelle et aux systèmes d'information. Plus précisément, dans chaque essai, je développe une compréhension “matérielle-discursive” du sujet, basée sur la pratique, qui est utile pour engager, étudier et donner un sens aux phénomènes liés à l'organisation des médias sociaux et à leurs conséquences. La nouveauté et la pertinence de ma contribution pour la littérature en théorie des organisations provient de la prise en compte du rôle constitutif de la matérialité dans les processus organisationnels, tandis que la nouveauté et la pertinence de ma thèse pour la littérature en systèmes d'information provient de la prise en charge des problèmes de contestation, de politique et d'agence collective vis à vis des médias sociaux. Finalement, j'apporte une contribution particulière en enquêtant le contexte peu étudié des mouvements de droite
In line with recent interest in social movements in OT and IS literatures and vis-à-vis the increasing digitalization of societies, in this dissertation I study the material enactment of social movements with, through, and by social media. In so doing, instead of separating social media and social movements to study their interactions—a maneuver that forecloses investigation into the situated constitution of both—I adopt a posthumanist performative perspective and shift my analytical gaze on the everyday actions and practices entailed in social media activism. This dissertation contributes to both OT and IS literatures. Specifically, in each essay I develop a practice-based material-discursive understanding of the subject matter that is useful in engaging, investigating, and making sense of phenomena entailed in social media organizing and their consequences. The novelty and relevance for the OT literature comes from attending to the constitutive role of materiality in organizing processes, while, an additional novelty and relevance for the IS literature comes from attending to issues of contestation, politics, and collective agency vis-à-vis social media. Finally, I make a distinctive contribution by attending to the understudied context of right-wing movements

Depending on the political environment, economic, cultural and social factors, the digital era provides new opportunities and constraints for mobilization of social movements.The current research was focused on exploring how protest leaders and activists used and perceived social media as a tool for communication and organization during the movement “take a step, #RejectSerzh”; a series of peaceful, anti-governmental protests which led to a shift of governmental power in Armenia. Prior work dedicated to unpacking the relationship between social movements and social media have focused on a few empirical cases. Hence, a case study of a yet underexplored social movement can add to this strand of literature. The methodological approach displayed in this study follows a mixed-method model. Interviews with activists of the movement “take a step, #RejectSerzh” and content analysis of official social media accounts of leaders of the movement “take a step, #RejectSerzh” were expected to provide a diverse perspective on social media tactics during the movement. The results implied that social media were perceived as one of the main contributors to the fulfilment of objectives of the movement “take a step, #RejectSerzh” in multiple ways: social media allowed for fast communication, decentralized organization, testimony of the non-violent nature of the movement, as well as validation of the movement through transparency of action (most importantly, in real-time). There was a strong indication that live video broadcasting function on Facebook was generally perceived as a tool with more capacities for contentious politics. Meanwhile, the results suggest that the movement “take a step, #RejectSerzh” could be perceived as a continuity of previous social movements, the negative experience gained from which curbed the overall tactics of the movement, rather than a result of immediate grievances. Nonetheless, the role of human emotions, such as fear, hope and will, was at the centre of interpretations of how the activists experienced the movement.

The atrocities committed by the military in Chile after the armed forces seized power in 1973 horrified Chileans and people around the world who had been following events in Chile for years prior to the coup. Together with the resistance in Chile, the transnational solidarity movement integrated by Chilean exiles and non-Chileans across the globe played a major role in ending the dictatorship. Since in-depth empirical studies of social movement learning are sparse this study addresses this gap as well as the ones in the existent research on the Chilean solidarity movement in Canada and elsewhere, the political activities of Chilean exiles in Canada and the Chilean solidarity movement specifically from a learning perspective. The purposes of this research, therefore, were to document and understand collective learning processes among solidarity movement participants and to contribute to the empirical and theoretical social movement learning scholarship. This study employed qualitative historical research methods, including oral history interviews and reviewing formal and informal archives. The conceptual tools used to understand solidarity movement learning and knowledge production drew broadly on new social movement thought and in particular on Freire, Gramsci and Habermas, which enabled an analysis of wider social forces, the specific pedagogies of the solidarity movement and the connections between the two. The findings speak to the value of a varied repertoire of action which merges the political with the cultural and which blends the intellectual with the emotional and the sensory. They also point to the power of artistic forms of expression for articulating and communicating social movement messages and for expressing identities. In addition, the findings show the local, experiential knowledge generated in social movements is vital to achieving movement aims, to critical learning and transformation, and to constructing individual and collective social movement identities. The study concludes that understanding social movements as learning communities is essential because it foregrounds the value and legitimacy of movement knowledge and the centrality of learning and knowledge production to movement aims and to the significance of movements for movement members, their allies and the public.

Master of Arts
Communications Studies
Charles J. Griffin
The 2011 Arab Spring Revolutions across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region drew international attention to the collection action phenomenon of revolutions. Despite having a significant impact on today’s globalized world, revolutions have been widely unexplored by social movement rhetorical scholars. This lack of study has prompted scholars to call for the investigation of the role human agency plays during revolutions (Morris, 2000). Rhetorical scholars are well-suited to meet this call but lack a methodological framework to examine revolutions. In responding to Morris’ call and with an interest in adding to the body of rhetorical social movement literature, this thesis asks two research questions. What are the rhetorical characteristics of revolutions? Are revolutions rhetorically distinct from social movements? To answer these questions, this thesis translates Jack Goldstone’s (1998) Divergent View of Social Movements and Revolutions into a rhetorical model for studying revolutions. This adaptation of the political science model relies heavily on Leland Griffin’s (1969) and Charles Stewart’s (1980) models of social movements. Additionally, the adapted model also incorporates James Wilkinson’s (1989) discussion of revolutionary rhetorical functions. The application of the new rhetorical model to the Egyptian Arab Spring reveals revolutions rhetorically develop and function in ways that creates a clear distinction between revolutions from social movements. These findings prompt discussion of methodological and critical implications.

The role of grievances in drawing public concern and activist support is a surprisingly understudied topic in modern social movement literature. This research is the first to parse grievances into core components to understand whether some grievances are more successful than others in evoking mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions that can ultimately benefit social movements. I find that not all grievances are created equal when it comes to concern, support and interest in activism, and that the content of grievances can be studied in systematic ways to identify the types of grievances likely to be more powerful injustice events.

This dissertation bridges social psychology and social movements by applying concepts from Affect Control Theory (such as evaluation ratings and deflection) to grievance evaluations. To understand the differential effects of grievances, I break grievances into three basic building blocks—a Perpetrator (Actor), the act itself (Behavior), and the victim (Object). I then use measures of cultural perceptions of the goodness or badness of behaviors and identities to investigate how people react to different configurations of good or bad perpetrators, behavior and victims in injustice events. I posit that two mechanisms—concern about the wellbeing of others and desire for consistency in meanings about the world—drive reactions to the goodness or badness of elements in a grievance. I test hypotheses using an experimental design, specifically a vignette study.

I find strong support, across outcomes, that bad behavior, particularly when directed toward good victims, constitutes a form of grievance that promotes strong mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions. I also find that the perpetrator matters for many outcomes, but that the effect of perpetrator is weaker than the effect of behavior and its target, tends to be insignificant for measures specific to behavioral activism, and largely disappears in cases of bad behavior toward good victims. In general, bad perpetrators produce higher levels of concern and emotion than do good perpetrators. The results also show that while concerns about the wellbeing of others dominate grievance evaluations, expectations about how the world should be (and deflection from those expectations) are useful for understanding reactions to perpetrators and to injustice events involving good behavior.

The conclusions from this dissertation contribute to a number of social movement arenas, including participation, movement outcomes, framing and emotions. Further, it has the real world implications of suggesting how well particular social issues might fare in attracting public concern and activist attention. This provides insights into both the types of movements more likely to be successful as well as the types of social problems less likely to draw public attention, increasing the chances that such problems persist.