Symposium on political communication and social movements: ships passing in the night^*

* A draft of this paper was presented at the 2018 American Sociological Association Meeting.

ABSTRACT

In this essay I argue that we can begin an interdisciplinary conversation by acknowledging the contributions political communication can make to social movement studies (and visa versa) as well as critically assessing how each discipline can productively contribute to the other. Social movement scholarship, for instance, can contribute key definitions and specifications to core concepts such as activism to political communication research. Communication scholarship can provide movement scholars a methodological toolkit that will help them better understand (and study) audiences, particularly how audiences understand movement messages. I conclude the essay by arguing that increased interdisciplinary engagement will grow the impact of both fields on public discourse and policy processes. An unwillingness to think across disciplinary boundaries, however, threatens to transform us into the worst version of our academic selves – close minded intellectuals unwilling (or unable) to change with the times.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• political communication
• interdisciplinary research
• collective action

Acknowledgements

I thank Jennifer Earl, Sarah Sobieraj, Jenny Davis, Dave Karpf, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on drafts of this piece.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Deana A. Rohlinger is a Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. She studies mass media, political participation, and American politics. She is the author of Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015), New Media and Society (New York University Press, 2019) and dozens of research articles and book chapters. Rohlinger is the current chair of the American Sociological Association's section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Society.

Notes

* A draft of this paper was presented at the 2018 American Sociological Association Meeting.

1 For a different perspective see Woolgar (1985).

2 Twitter recently updated its limits on account following as well as how many tweets an account could send per day (2,400 per day), which is also broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals. This is part of their effort to reduce the effects of bots on Twitter usage and discourse. At this point, it is unclear how effective these efforts have been. However, it is reasonable to assume that the average human Twitter user falls far below the 2,000 posts per day.

3 Scholars have pointed out that, as categories, troll and trolling do not have fixed meanings within online communities (see Cole, 2015; Phillips, 2015).

4 For an excellent overview of how trolling effects gendered activism see Sobieraj (2017).

5 The movement is trying to make a media comeback and shape conversations on abortion access ahead of the mid-term campaigns. In August 2018, the group launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish a book of essays, photos and art that documents local efforts to spread abortion positive messages in their communities, and Bonow announced the book’s publication in the Inspiration section of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine.

6 While the attack was assumed to be a shooting, it was actually a stabbing. Nonetheless, journalists, corporations, and individuals alike continued to use the #OSU Shooting hashtag. For more information see Rohlinger and Williams (2019).

7 Elsewhere (Rohlinger, Williams & Teek, under review) we detail the conditions under which opinion entrepreneurs emerge.

8 This is something Jason Kessler, affiliated with the Proud Boys, did via radio and on his website. To learn more about Kessler and his involvement in the first Unite the Right rally listen to This American Life episode 626 titled, “White Haze.”

9 To be fair, conflating intent with message is more common by political scientists, who are predominantly interested in electoral politics and outcomes. In the context of elections assuming the intent of the message is to induce atomized, individual action (in this case voting), is reasonable. That said, this conflation fails to capture intents to build a following or movement beyond an election campaign (e.g., Bernie Sanders).

10 This general assessment is based on an analysis of abstracts presented at the National Communication Association and the International Communication Association conferences over the last two years.

11 This is a summary – and extension – of some of the arguments made in an introductory chapter to a special issue of Studies in Media Communication edited by Jennifer Earl and myself (2018).