Table 1 - uploaded by Christian Bröer
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
Social movement researchers propose different ways to incorporate meaning into structural approaches, notably into political opportunity structure (POS) theory. In this article we further develop one of the recent attempts to do so: discursive opportunity structure theory (DOS) as proposed by Koopmans and Olzak. We pay particular attention to the r...
Context in source publication
Similar publications
We explore how activists' public and private politics elicit different organizational responses. Using data on U.S. petroleum companies from 1982 to 2010, we investigate how climate change activists serving as witnesses at congressional hearings and engaging in firm protests influenced firms' internal and external responses. We find that public pol...
This article explores the relationship between hardships and protest in the world-system. Despite the history of discussion of anti-systemic protest, there has been little work that differentiates world-systems contributions to social movement research from others who examine social movements. We contribute to a theory of anti-systemic protest by r...
This article explores when and why firms participate in overt corporate-sponsored social activism. To shed light on this question, I empirically explore the emergence and implications of a new strategic phenomenon in non-market strategy – the corporate-sponsored boycott – in which firms voluntarily cooperate with contentious social movement organiz...
Citations
... First, public debates are the primary contexts in which an event's discursive and policy effects are created (Koopmans et al., 2005;. Second, citizens rely upon these debates to make up their minds about a terrorist attack, for example regarding the level of importance they should accord to that event (Broër & Duyvendak, 2009;Koopmans & Olzak, 2004). ...
Over the past two decades, social science research has repeatedly shown that societies tend to be affected more by a foreign event when it occurs in a geographically, culturally, and/or socially proximate location. The extant terrorism literature, however, has thus far mainly focused on the role played by geographical proximity in the creation of terrorist attacks' cross–border impacts, thereby largely ignoring the possible importance of cultural and social proximity. In this paper, we therefore investigate both whether and why cultural and/or social proximity between an audience country and the locus of a foreign terrorist attack increases the latter's impact on the former. We do this by conducting an in–depth exploratory case study of the impacts of seven foreign terrorist attacks on American public debates about domestic affairs. Overall, we find strong evidence that both cultural and social proximity increased a foreign terrorist incident's impact on American public debates. These findings suggest (1) that the concept of proximity should be more systematically integrated into the terrorism literature and (2) that a broader conception of proximity is needed. On top of this, our study also offers some insight into the possible mechanisms that drive these observed proximity effects.
... Además, existe la necesidad de crear aproximaciones metodológicas para el contexto específico Latinoamericano que se diferencia de otros contextos en varios aspectos clave. La percepción de seguridad de la ciudadanía en Latinoamérica es la más baja del mundo (Botero et al. 2021), lo que afecta la credibilidad de las instituciones. Especialmente el concepto de feminicidio tiene una relación inherente con la violencia institucional que es una interpretación propia de la región (Toledo 2009). ...
El feminicidio es resultado de estructuras discriminatorias sociales y culturales, perpetuadas mediante los procesos comunicativos en los ámbitos privados y públicos. Estudios anteriores sobre la cobertura mediática en Latinoamérica encontraron narrativas de culpabilización de las víctimas y justificación de los agresores. Pero, no analizaron otro tipo de discursos como la discusión de políticas públicas, movilizaciones sociales, estudios académicos y la representación de otros actores sociales como las familias de las víctimas, organizaciones sociales, activistas, expertas y autoridades. Las cuales también son publicadas por los mismos medios de comunicación e influyen en la discusión pública y negociación de significado. Este trabajo se dirige a cubrir esta laguna de la literatura con una propuesta metodológica holística con perspectiva feminista, creada para el contexto Latinoamericano en donde las relaciones de género, raza, etnia y colonialidad tienen un rol fundamental en la configuración de las relaciones de poder. El objetivo principal es examinar cómo el poder patriarcal es reproducido y resistido discursivamente por múltiples actores en la esfera pública. Mediante cuatro objetivos específicos: (1) Análisis de la representación de las víctimas y los agresores. (2) Análisis del uso sensacionalista de la información. (3) Análisis de discursos contrapuestos y su legitimación, para lo que se analiza la prominencia, la representación de la fuente de la información, y los soportes argumentativos. (4) Identificar las rupturas en el discurso patriarcal hegemónico y la negociación de significado, mediante un estudio comparativo con una dimensión temporal. Para ejemplificar el uso se analizó un caso en diarios mexicanos y se descubrió que los medios tradicionales reproducen discursos contrapuestos: discriminatorios y de resistencia feminista; pero solo el primero se legitima con soportes argumentativos que sugieren veracidad. El discurso de la resistencia tiende a sustentarse en argumentos emocionales. Lo anterior sugiere que los medios reproducen discursos progresistas, pero contribuyen a socavarlos, lo que ayuda a mantener el estatus-quo y las relaciones jerárquicas de poder patriarcal. Previous studies about the media coverage in Latin America found narratives of blaming the victims and justification of the perpetrators. But they did not analyze other discourses such as the discussion of public policies, social movements, academic studies and the representation of other social actors like the families of the victims, social organizations, activists, experts and authorities, which are published by the same media and have influence in the public debate and meaning negotiation. This work aims to address the gap in the literature with a methodological proposal with a holistic and feminist approach, created for the Latin American context in which the relations of gender, race, ethnicity and coloniality have a fundamental role in the configuration of power relations. The main objective is to examine how the patriarchal power is discursively reproduced and resisted by multiple actors in the public sphere. By means of four specific objectives: (1) Analyze the representation of victims and perpetrators. (2) Analyze the sensationalist use of the information. (3) Analyze counter discourses and legitimation, by analyzing the prominence, the representation of the information sources, and the argumentative supports. (4) Identify the ruptures in the hegemonic patriarchal discourse and meaning negotiation, with a temporal dimension comparative study. To exemplify the use of the methodology, it was applied to the analysis of one case in Mexican newspapers; it was found that traditional media reproduce counter discourses: discriminatory and feminist resistance; but just the first is legitimized with argumentative supports that suggest veracity. The discourse of resistance tends to be sustained in emotional arguments. The above suggest that the media reproduces progressive discourse, but they contribute to subvert it, which helps to maintain the status quo and the hierarchical patriarchal power relations.
... The application of the approach has been used to measure and capture the visibility and resonance capacity of social movements and whether their claims are perceived legitimate in the eyes of the public and authorities. To this end, numerous prominent works of this tradition have paid attention to the media coverage of social movements, mainly deploying quantitative and comparative methods (for instance, see Ferree, 2003;Koopmans and Olzak, 2004;Giugni et al., 2005;Bail, 2012;Brown, 2013;Motta 2014;Vasi et al.;Bail et al., 2017;Anderson, 2018), as other scholars focused on the role of framings (McCammon et al., 2007), emotions (Bröer and Duyvendak, 2009), and transnational diffusion of intellectual discourses (Ushiyama, 2019). At this juncture, the explicitly interactive character of the DOS approach provides the researcher to explore the dynamic interaction between the state, social movements and the public sphere. ...
From 2006, the state’s highly securitised and militarised anti-narcotics strategies resulted in an unprecedented level of violence and casualties in Mexico. Furthermore, political and judicial channels have been partially closed to the civil society suffering from the ongoing violence and war on drugs. This study elaborates on the emergence and development of Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD), which took place in 2011 as a civil society response to the increasing extrajudicial killings. Aiming to analyse how Mexican authorities’ policies and strategies of the movement relationally shaped each other and forged the pathway of MPJD, the paper deploys the Discursive Opportunities Structure (DOS) approach. Drawing on the theoretical and conceptual toolkit of DOS and its conceptualisations, the article argues that MPJD has succeeded in achieving many of its goals, most notably making the victims of the war on drugs visible and becoming a considerable political movement in Mexican politics. By analysing the case of MPJD, which emerged and developed during the ongoing war on drugs in Mexico, the study contributes to the social movements studies that aim to understand the drug wars and political opportunities that arise in these environments.
... Given this, the development of the airport and, in particular, aircraft noise have been controversial public and political issues in both cities for many years (for Zurich, see e.g. Wirth, 2004;and Brö er and Duyvendak, 2009; for Mainz, see e.g. Schreckenberg et al., 2010;and Wiebusch, 2014). ...
Combining individual-level survey data and geo-referenced administrative noise data for four European cities (Bern, Zurich, Hanover, and Mainz; n = 7,450), we test the social gradient hypothesis, which states that exposure to residential noise is higher for households in a lower socioeconomic position (measured by income and migration background). In addition, we introduce and test the ‘environmental shielding hypothesis’, which states that, given environmental ‘bads’ in the neighbourhood, privileged social groups have better opportunities to shield themselves against them. Our results show that, for many residents of the four cities, observed road traffic and aircraft noise levels are above World Health Organization limits. Estimates of spatial error regression models only partly support the social gradient hypothesis. While we find significant but relatively small income effects and somewhat stronger effects of having a (non-Western) migration background, these effects are not significant in all cities. However, especially high-income households are more capable of avoiding exposure to indoor noise. Due to their residence characteristics and having the resources to maintain high standards of noise protection, these households have more capabilities to shield themselves against environmental bads in their neighbourhood. This supports the environmental shielding hypothesis.
... Schreckenberg et al., 2010;Wiebusch, 2014; for Zurich, see e.g. Wirth, 2004;Bröer and Duyvendak, 2009). In Mainz as compared to Zurich, however, the aircraft noise issue was much more salient at the time of our study. ...
Based on a study in two European cities, Mainz in Germany and Zurich in Switzerland, the article investigates both acoustical and non-acoustical factors affecting indoor annoyance due to residential road traffic and aircraft noise. We specifically focus on three factors: (1) the role of windows as a feature of the building where people live; (2) the role of individual environmental concern as a general attitude; and (3) the role of household income as an indicator of socioeconomic resources. Empirical results show that closed windows in general and closed high-quality windows in particular are an important barrier against outdoor road traffic and aircraft noise, as well as a helpful subjective coping tool against corresponding annoyances. Environmental concern, too, proves to be a significant predictor of noise annoyance. Environmentally highly concerned people articulate feelings of annoyance more often than environmentally less concerned ones. As expected income is negatively related to road traffic noise annoyance. However, we find a positive association of income with annoyance from aircraft noise. Although objective exposure to aircraft noise is lower for high-income households, they feel stronger annoyed by noise from airplanes. Income shows various indirect effects on noise annoyance. A comparative analysis of road traffic and aircraft noise annoyance yields similarities, but also remarkable differences in terms of their influence factors.
... Collective action frames underline how serious, unjust or immoral is a social condition that might be previously seen as unfortunate or tolerable, attributing responsibilities to those who are culpable of the situation while also encouraging individuals to articulate to work in a somewhat unified manner (Snow and Benford 1992). Thus, frames portray action-oriented arrays of meanings that inspire mobilisation (Benford and Snow 2000) legitimising discontent by pointing out the incompetence of power holders (Bröer and Duyvendak 2009). So, even in the absence of any structural linkages or resources, the arguments that movement actors use to motivate others to participate in collective efforts to generate social change are decisive in getting new sympathisers 30 The original version, published on the day of the march, is available in SERAPAZ (2011). ...
... Moreover, policy outcomes influence several areas of socio-political life because they introduce or transform meaning-making symbols that frame and legitimise grievances, identities, goals and even feelings (Bröer and Duyvendak 2009;Marshall and Barclay 2003;Meyer 2005;Pedriana 2006;Schneider 1986). Thus, even with its implementation issues, the MPJD put the dignity and rights of the victims of the war in the national socio-political agenda -the GLV represented an acknowledgement of the emergency of the country, where crime and the government produced, and continue to reproduce, tens of thousands of victims each year. ...
... This research shows that although a victory in the policy process can stop the actions of one collective actor, it can also benefit the mobilisation of others-which were formed due to the spillover effect of the initiatorwithin the same social movement community. Thus, as has happened in other contexts (Banaszak and Ondercin 2016;Bröer and Duyvendak 2009;Ferree 2003), the MPJD case indicates that political outcomes legitimised the discourses and demands of new actors in the polity, a phenomenon that is a cultural outcome. This finding reiterates the importance that social movements can have in the enduring attention that an issue receives even after its demobilisation (Ferree 2012;Gaby and Caren 2016). ...
In 2006, then Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared a ‘war’ against criminal organisations that were beginning to control some of the country’s territories. Consequently, the number of murders and disappearances of people began to increase steadily by tens of thousands. Far from acknowledging the errors of the strategy, the authorities constantly criminalised the victims and denied the tragic consequences of the use of the military against drug cartels. After the murder of his son on 28 March 2011, the poet Javier Sicilia started leading mobilisations in the state of Morelos to protest the violence. In just a few days, the actions expanded to virtually all regions of the country embracing relatives of victims, activists and organisations of very different backgrounds, forming the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD).
This thesis comprises an in-depth case study of the MPJD. After providing an overview of the context in which the mobilisations started and my research methods, I develop thematic chapters. In the first one, I analyse the recruitment dynamics of the MPJD. These pages contribute to the literature by advancing the understanding of how people without prior political experience or links to a mobilised group join and participate in protest. This, moreover, helps in refining rather than reifying the function of social networks. The second chapter explains the upward scale-shift process of mobilisation and the response given by the government through the analysis of coalition building, framing and counter-framing. The results of the analysis help to specify the conditions that facilitate not only the development of alliances, but also those that lead to their accelerated breakdown. Regarding framing, the work contributes to understanding which attributes facilitate resonance and alignment amongst audiences with contrasting characteristics. Furthermore, the discussion around counter-framing highlights how official responses influence the discursive processes of contentious actors, whose opportunities are not the same in ‘the streets’ and in official spaces. Next, the third chapter examines the type of social ties formed through the involvement in the contentious performances led by the relatives of victims of extreme violence. Bringing together the literature on social movements and a body of Latin American research on “emotional communities”, I argue that the MPJD fostered a political-emotional community in which the public narration of suffering made victims and non-victims coalesce to demand justice collectively. Overall, this chapter advances our understanding of the dynamics through which allies that are not directly aggrieved by extreme violence develop a sense of community with the victims. Likewise, it develops four empirical dimensions for the analysis of political-emotional communities: the role of testimonios (testimonial narratives), the ethics developed during contention, the fluctuations in participation, and the costs and risks involved in the mobilisations.
The last two chapters focus on the outcomes of the MPJD. The fourth one encompasses the political and cultural outcomes contributing to the literature in two ways: First, by discussing how achievements in the policy process can demobilise some groups but mobilise others; and second, by explaining how the spillover of a contentious actor can consolidate a social movement community in an emergent contentious field. Finally, the fifth chapter analyses the biographical consequences of participation in victim-led mobilisations. These pages provide an account of how the lives of the participants have been influenced due to their involvement in contention. This chapter advances the understanding of the interplay between social relations and cognitions that lead participants to modify their worldviews.
In an academic sense, this thesis introduces a series of thematic chapters that provide empirical evidence to refine several areas of the theory to better understand various processes related to social mobilisation. Regarding the importance that this thesis can have for the activists and the families of the victims, my work is, first, a systematisation of their campaigns and experiences; second, an acknowledgement of the transcendence of the actions that they have been carrying out sustainedly during a decade; and third, this research is a space for memory, so that their names and those of their relatives are not forgotten, so that the demand for justice does not end.
... Schreckenberg et al., 2010;Wiebusch, 2014; for Zurich, see e.g. Wirth, 2004;Bröer and Duyvendak, 2009). In Mainz as compared to Zurich, however, the aircraft noise issue was much more salient at the time of our study. ...
Link to Environmental Research online publication:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512101570X Based on a study in two European cities, Mainz in Germany and Zurich in Switzerland, the article investigates both acoustical and non-acoustical factors affecting indoor annoyance due to residential road traffic and aircraft noise. We specifically focus on three factors: (1) the role of windows as a feature of the building where people live; (2) the role of individual environmental concern as a general attitude; and (3) the role of household income as an indicator of socioeconomic resources. Empirical results show that closed windows in general and closed high-quality windows in particular are an important barrier against outdoor road traffic and aircraft noise, as well as a helpful subjective coping tool against corresponding annoyances. Environmental concern, too, proves to be a significant predictor of noise annoyance. Environmentally highly concerned people articulate feelings of annoyance more often than environmentally less concerned ones. As expected income is negatively related to road traffic noise annoyance. However, we find a positive association of income with annoyance from aircraft noise. Although objective exposure to aircraft noise is lower for high-income households, they feel stronger annoyed by noise from airplanes. Income shows various indirect effects on noise annoyance. A comparative analysis of road traffic and aircraft noise annoyance yields similarities, but also remarkable differences in terms of their influence factors.
... Since the late 1990s, airports have undergone a surge of interdisciplinary interest in study. Not only seen as major economic nodes in urban-regional and national development (Blanton, 2004;Gillen, 2011), airports have been recognised as extraordinary interchanges of mobility and the performance of identity (Adey et al., 2012;Elliott & Radford, 2015;Shilon & Shamir, 2016), as well as key sites of security and protest (Adey, 2004;Bröer & Duyvendak, 2009;Salter, 2004;Suau-Sanchez et al., 2011). Although airports raise multiple considerations for their planning and operation, binding together multiple domains (Boucsein et al., 2017), the field of airport studies has been distinctly bifurcated along disciplinary boundaries. ...
Aeromobility and air travel are known to produce multilevel experiences of sound, ultimately resulting in social and environmental struggles against noise pollution. Different studies that address aeromobile sounds and atmospheres, however, do so while using highly different concepts, approaches, tools, and methods that often create disconnects between different disciplines and their capacity for dialogue. Drawing primarily on a study of Ben Gurion International Airport, and on a nonrepresentational approach to aeromobile sounds, their experience, representation, and sensing – by people and technologies – this paper provides conceptually informed empirical accounts of different ways to get to know noise, while addressing the gaps they create between different fields of knowledge. The paper concludes that nonrepresentational thinking is a valuable pillar with which shared grounds between academic discourse, practitioners, policymakers, and the public could be progressed, offering wider considerations of noise, its constitution, outcomes, and futures in aeromobile geographies and airport planning.
... Furthermore, even if certain enabling conditions for the driver are present, political actors must first be able to recognize these conditions as opportunities before they can take advantage of them. The driver can gain increasing momentum when its topic and claims create resonance with the public and more legitimized actors, such as when recognized scientists and media supported (and in some cases criticized) Fridays for Future, paving the way for strikes in secondary schools (Statham and Koopmans, 1999;Koopmans and Olzak, 2004;Duyvendak and Bröer, 2009). Therefore, the perceived chances of political actors as well as their past experiences with successes or failures influence their strategizing and can produce self-enhancing effects (de Moor and Wahlström, 2019). ...
In the annual Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook, CLICCS researchers make the first systematic attempt to assess which climate futures are plausible, by combining multidisciplinary assessments of plausibility. The inaugural 2021 Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook addresses the question: Is it plausible that the world will reach deep decarbonization by 2050?
... Cultural sociologists, on the other hand, have depicted it as a way in which individuals understand and evaluate the world (Barbalet, 2002;Jasper, 1997). Both lines of scholarship have emphasized that emotions translate grievances into participation either individually (Jasper, 2011) or in combination with other factors such as collective identity (Berezin, 2001;Polletta and Jasper, 2011;Van Zomeren et al., 2004), discourse (Bröer and Duyvendak, 2009), rituals (Traini, 2009), events (Jasper, 1997), and social context (Van Stekelenburg et al., 2009). ...
Focusing on journalists’ professional behaviors during the 2013 Gezi Protests in Turkey, this article offers a theoretical framework for understanding the transformation of inertia into contentious action. Accordingly, the emotion of shame triggers contention when it is experienced with a contingent event that generates hope for change. In Turkey, journalists working in the mainstream media extensively practiced self-censorship before the 2013 Gezi Protests and felt ashamed of themselves. This feeling became a trigger for joining public protests, resigning and/or producing non-compliant news stories when Gezi offered them an opportunity for social change. This argument builds on the sociology of emotions and events, and is inductively derived from 20 in-depth interviews conducted with journalists. The article presents the social context in which shame arises and the place of this emotion in generating contention. Through this research, the Gezi Protests assert their continuing relevance for understanding the relationship between repression and contention, especially in countries hit by the current wave of authoritarianism.
