Social Movement Communication
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Social Movement Communication: Language, Technology, and Social Organization in an Urban Homeless Movement Amoshaun P. Toft A dissertation submitted in partial completion of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2010 Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Communication Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License 2010 University of Washington Abstract Social Movement Communication: Language, Technology, and Social Organization in an Urban Homeless Movement Amoshaun P. Toft Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Kirsten Foot Department of Communication This study examines three overlapping campaigns that occurred simultaneously in the local Seattle homeless movement in 2007-2009: the “ No New Jail ” campaign to stop the building of a proposed misdemeanant jail, a project aimed at creating a self-managed semi-permanent community to house up to 1,000 people called “Nickelsville ,” and a campaign to “ Stop the Sweeps ” of homeless encampments in parks, under freeways and in wooded hillsides around the city. The study engages a multi-level, multi-methods approach to the analysis of social movement communication in each of the three issue campaigns. I argue that social movements only exist in the context of issue areas, and that issue areas offer affordances to participants that structure material and symbolic actions. I offer three key findings of interest to scholars in the fields of communication technologies, organizational communication, and discourse studies. First, I found that Internet enabled communication technologies were important for social movement communication, but that their use was highly structured by material inequality. While the emphasis on material poverty within homeless organizing processes may have highlighted inequalities in access and skill when it came to technology use, and encouraged participants towards particular strategies of use in this context, I suggest that all efforts for social change take place within contexts of material inequality, and urge future research to consider technology use within the broader context of communication practices – be they technologically mediated or not. Second, I found that communication was at the heart of social movement organizing efforts, and took place within two areas of communicative activity: issue contestation and participant mobilization . Issue contestation was divided into two aspects: materiality and subjectivity ; and participant mobilization involved three types of communication processes: institutionalizing the movement , taking collective action , and community organizing . I suggest that this typology may be usefully employed in other social movement contexts, even as the words and meanings that populate them would change. Third, I found that formal organizations continue to play an important role in social movement activity, even as technologies of communication augment organizational capacities, with traditional authority markers continuing to predict organizational prominence in hyperlink issue networks. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iv List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. v Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... vii Dedication .................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction: Communicating a Homeless Movement ................................................................... 1 Language, Technology, and Social Organization in an Urban Homeless Movement ............... 4 Structure, Behavior, and Agency in Social Movement Communication ................................... 8 Structure. .................................................................................................................................. 9 Behavior. ................................................................................................................................ 10 Agency. .................................................................................................................................. 12 Discourse and Social Change ................................................................................................... 14 Social Movement Communication ........................................................................................... 16 Issue Areas, Issue Sectors, and Issue Campaigns .................................................................... 19 Chapter Outline ........................................................................................................................ 21 Chapter 1: Homeless Organizing in Seattle: Context of the Present Study .................................. 24 Issue: Homelessness in Seattle ................................................................................................. 24 Campaigns: Sweeping Nickelsville into the New Seattle Jail ................................................. 25 Chapter 2: How Movement Participants Use Communication Technologies to Produce Resistance .................................................................................................................................. 34 Technologies and Social Structure ........................................................................................... 35 Communication Technologies and Social Movements ............................................................ 37 Analysis: Communication Technologies in Homeless Organizing ......................................... 40 The importance of face-to-face communication. ................................................................... 41 Connecting with housed allies. .............................................................................................. 45 Moving from screen to street. ................................................................................................ 49 Using existing communication infrastructures. ..................................................................... 52 Discussion: Technologies of Communication and Social Movements in Context .................. 58 Chapter 3: Social Organization and Movement: Organizing Homelessness ................................ 62 Network Analysis and the Study of Social Structure: Individuals, Organizations, and Campaigns .......................................................................................................................... 64 Formal Social Organization in SMC ........................................................................................ 69 Individual communicative action. ......................................................................................... 71 Communication resources. .................................................................................................... 74 Organizational types and organizational sectors. .................................................................. 76 Emergent Social Organization in SMC .................................................................................... 78 Issue campaigns and issue sectors. ........................................................................................ 81 Hyperlinks and power within issue sectors. .......................................................................... 84 Analysis: Formal and Emergent Social Organization in Social Movement Communication .. 87 Formal organization: Authorship, communication resources, and organizational sectors. ... 88 Authorship. ...........................................................................................................................89 Communication resources. ...................................................................................................93 Ogranizational types and organizational sectors. ...............................................................102 Emergent organization: Campaigns and issue networks. .................................................... 109 Talking about issues: The sweeps, Nickelsville, and the proposed jail. ............................111 i Hyperlinks, discursive roles, and actor prominence...........................................................114 Discussion: Power, Participation, and Representation ........................................................... 131 Issue sectors and textual distribution. .................................................................................. 131 Formal organizations. .......................................................................................................... 132 Authorial brokerage via cross-publication profiles. ............................................................ 133 Emergent social organization. ............................................................................................. 134 Chapter 4: Language and Movement: Contesting Homelessness and Mobilizing Participation 138 Communicative Functions in Social Movements .................................................................. 139 Analysis: Issue Contestation and Mobilization Discourses ................................................... 145 Issue contestation: Material poverty and deviant subjectivities