Charlotte Ryan

Theory into Practice: Framing, the News Media, and Collective Action

The concept of framing applied to the interaction between social movements and the news media, including local television news, is evident in the experience of the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP). MRAP employs frame analysis to assist social movement and community groups in advancing their goals through the news media. The paper presents the important lessons derived from the applied work of MRAF

Media, movements, and the quest for social justice

Abstract This essay examines the efforts of the Media Research and Action Project to assist marginalized groups in employing news as a political resource. The analysis highlights the news media as critical arenas of struggle for social movements and community groups seeking political change and social justice. The essay details how the Media Research and Action Project, influenced by resource mobilization theory and multiple research perspectives on news, assists community groups and social movements in their ability to: identify and challenge barriers to news media access; sharpen their preferred frames and strategies for promoting their definitions of political issues through the news media; and develop media initiatives integrated into their political strategies. A case involving a media‐centered public information campaign to influence policy formation and public attitudes concerning workplace reproductive rights is highlighted.

Changing Coverage of Domestic Violence Murders A Longitudinal Experiment in Participatory Communication

Stressing relation-building and participatory communication approaches, the Rhode Island Coalition against Domestic Violence worked with journalists to develop a best practices handbook on news coverage of domestic violence murders. This study compares print coverage of domestic violence murders prehandbook (1996-1999) and posthandbook (2000-2002). Significant changes include increased labeling of the murder of intimates as domestic violence and doubled usage of advocates as sources. As a result, domestic violence murders, previously framed as unpredictable private tragedies, are more commonly framed posthandbook as social problems warranting public intervention. The authors conclude that relation-building approaches can affect news cultures and public discourse when conducted in conjunction with comprehensive participatory communications strategies.

It Takes a Movement to Raise an Issue: Media Lessons from the 1997 U.P.S. Strike

Modern market-driven mass media systems may present collective actors with communication opportunities, but these come laced with formidable costs and constraints. This paper argues that despite these barriers, collective actors, working intentionally and strategically, can develop effective media campaigns to communicate with mass audiences — audiences they cannot reach directly. To utilize these narrow opportunities, however, a collective actor needs both adequate communications infrastructure and a communication strategy well integrated into its overall organizing strategy. The 1997 Teamsters strike against United Parcel Service (U.P.S.) provides an illustrative case.

Building Public Will: The Battle for Affordable—and Supportive—Housing

Despite their documented successes, permanent supportive housing programs have not received adequate funding at federal or state levels. Building public will to fund permanent supportive housing, therefore, becomes the order of the day. Drawing on the work of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (RICH), the authors describe how RICH, housing advocates, activists representing the homeless and formerly homeless, and other allies forged an inclusive, multiconstituency network. This coalition went on to reverse state cuts in the highly effective Neighborhood Opportunities Program, which had built more than 1,000 units of well-received affordable housing including permanent supportive housing units.

Research Collaboration in a Communication Rights Campaign: Lessons Learned:

In building public support for social change, activists in communities of color routinely approach broader audiences via news media. Communities of color, however, routinely face disparities that limit their access to media including local news media outlets. This lack of access mirrors inequalities in political, social, and economic arenas and can slow public awareness campaigns to address disparities in health, environmental, and other quality-of-life issues. I describe two community-based collaborative action research studies that documented and challenged how local television newscasts underrepresented and misrepresented three communities of color in Boston. The linkage between communication rights and campaigns to address quality-of-life issues is presented, as well as unresolved challenges in the collaborative research process. The study has implications for environmental health campaigns.

Using Imperfect Opportunities to Build Movements

dward Bonilla-Silva’s and Corey Dolgon’s November 2008 reflections on the Obama election captured the doubts, criticisms, and hopes expressed by progressive activists with whom I work. Despite truncated health care and banking reforms and U.S. military expansionism, some social movement organizations have used the Obama victory to open new, albeit imperfect, windows of opportunity for social justice organizing. Recognizing this, both Bonilla-Silva and Dolgon urged sociologists to deepen our engagement with social movements. To that end, I ask, “What can sociologists do to support the growth of social movements in this period?” Calls for engagement are well-taken, but sustaining collaborations with social movement groups and community and labor organizing efforts is easier said than done. Activist groups are feeling the economic pinch; some are folding, some retracting. An immigrant rights’ group with which I work cannot meet the needs of incoming refugees from Iraq and new immigrants escaping wars in Africa. While its work has doubled, its funding has shriveled. It is laying off staff and may shut down. For our part, academics are facing larger classes with reduced resources. Recent graduates and junior faculty feel increased pressure for publications as do contingent faculty awaiting the opening of a permanent position. So what’s a progressive academic to do? Public sociology has been posed as one route of engagement, but as Corey Dolgon argues, academic institutionalization threatens to innervate service learning, as it has cultural studies, womens studies and other university-based programs intended to promote critical engagement and experiential learning. University administrators use community service performed by their students as a defense when the university is criticized for invading neighboring communities or refusing to pay its fair share for city services. In many colleges, budget cuts have reduced service-learning to little more than a volunteer placement service. Little space remains to reflect much less to discuss the relation between service and justice. E