David B. Tindall

A decade of network change: Turnover, persistence and stability in personal communities☆

Abstract We analyze changes in intimate ties in personal community networks. Our data come from interviews conducted a decade apart with 33 Torontonians. There is much turnover in these networks, with only 27% of intimate ties persisting. Durable ties tend to be with intimates who have provided social support, are in frequent telephone contact, or are kin. There was almost complete turnover in the networks of those respondents who got married during the decade. By contrast, the amount of turnover in networks is not associated with whether the respondents had children, moved to a different home, or started/stopped doing paid work during the decade.

Social Structure, Identities, and Values: A Network Approach to Understanding People's Relationships to Forests

A social network approach is employed to examine the role that social capital plays in the relationships people have with forested landscapes and to identify the implications of these relationships to forest land-use planning. We argue that network-based processes lead to the development of social identity and to the formation of forest values. By linking the individual level of analysis to expressive outcomes, the relationship between network range, identity diversity, and diversity of forest values is explored. Results suggest that network range is directly related to identity diversity, which mediates the relationship between network range and forest value diversity, and that strong ties are relatively more important than weak ties in explaining the formation of identity and forest value diversity.

“Governments Have the Power”? Interpretations of Climate Change Responsibility and Solutions Among Canadian Environmentalists

The authors examine environmentalists’ attribution of responsibility for addressing climate change and their beliefs about solutions to this problem. Their analysis is based on responses to open-ended questions completed by 1,227 members of nine different environmental organizations. For these environmental movement participants, the federal government is seen as most responsible for addressing climate change. Government leadership is necessary because it has the power to set regulations and lead corporations and citizens toward pro-environmental behavior. However, a substantial number of participants also assert that “individuals are the driving force” in dealing with climate change. In this framework, individuals can take responsibility either through making lifestyle changes, or through applying pressure to government and businesses as citizens and consumers. Corporations are interpreted as unwilling to change on their own but must be coerced into becoming more environmentally sustainable by a strong state.

Network centrality and social movement media coverage: A two-mode network analytic approach

Abstract This article examines the relationship between structural location (namely, degree centrality) and news media coverage. Our central hypothesis is that the network centrality of social movement actors is positively associated with the prevalence of actors being cited in the print news media. This paper uses two-mode data from a communication network of environmentalists in British Columbia, and examines the relationship between their structural location and the frequency by which they are cited in newsprint media with regard to particular frames (about forest conservation, environmental protest, and related issues). We asked a sample of social movement participants about their ties to a target list of relatively high profile actors (environmental activists). We turned the resulting network matrix into a bipartite graph that examined the relationships amongst the target actors vis a vis the respondents. Next we calculated point in-degree for the target actors. For the target actors we also have data from a representative sample of 957 print news articles about forestry and conservation of old growth forests in British Columbia. We compare the effects of network centrality of the target actor versus several attributes of the target actors (gender, level of radicalism, leadership status) on the amount of media coverage that each of the target actors receives. We find that network centrality is associated with media coverage controlling for actor attributes. We discuss theoretical implications of this research. Finally, we also discuss the methodological pros and cons of using a “target name roster” to construct two-mode data on social movement activists.

WOOD FRAMES: FRAMING THE FORESTS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA^

Abstract Much research into social movement framing activity has been based on qualitative case-study analysis of specific movements. These analyses are limited in that are they unable to systematically track any long-term relationships that might exist among a variety of social movement framing strategies. A series of hypotheses were developed that deal with the frequency and prevalence of environmental activists framing tactics over time, which include the frame alignment processes of transformation and amplification, as well as core framing activities of diagnosis, prognosis, and motivation. A quantitative content analysis of news media stories about the protection of temperate rainforests in British Columbia, Canada, over a seven-year period was conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings show that amplification frames are more prevalent than transformation frames, and diagnostic frames are more prevalent than prognostic or motivational frames. In the discussion, several areas for future quantitative research into social movement framing are suggested.

Network social capital as an outcome of social movement mobilization: Using the position generator as an indicator of social network diversity☆

Abstract In the social mobility literature, the position generator (PG) has been used to examine the relationship between the structural location of individuals, and outcomes such as obtaining a high status job. Diversity of occupational ties (as measured by the PG) is also a significant predictor of an individuals cultural capital. A great deal of work has also been done in the field of social movements examining the relationship between networks and mobilization. However, only limited attention has been given to the position generator in this literature. Also, while past research has demonstrated that prior network ties to activists is one of the most important predictors of current activism, relatively little research has been devoted to examining network structure as an outcome of activism. The present paper builds upon these insights by utilizing data collected with the position generator on a sample of environmental movement members, and examining the relationship between individual activism (as an independent variable) and diversity of occupational ties (as a dependent variable). The result of key theoretical significance is that those who are more active in the environmental movement develop a greater diversity of occupational ties to other environmentalists. Results suggest that this process occurs over time. These findings provide evidence that social capital (as indicated by network diversity) is one outcome of social movement mobilization.

Social Movement Participation over Time: An Ego-Network Approach to Micro-Mobilization

Abstract This study focuses upon the relationship between personal networks and the participation of individuals in a social movement over time, a rarity in the social movement literature, which has mostly used cross-sectional designs to explore this topic. Objectives of the research include empirically documenting some of the mechanisms that underlie the effects of network ties on social movement participation, examining the explanatory power of an ego-network model of individual participation in social movements over time, and examining whether network effects on activism are spurious, once past activism is controlled. Data were collected through two waves of a panel survey administered to members of three formal environmental organizations in Victoria, British Columbia in 1992 and 1998. These organizations were central to the British Columbia wilderness preservation movement. Multiple regression and path analysis are utilized to examine the relative importance of network degree versus network range, as well as frequency of communication and level of movement identification, for explaining level of social movement participation. Results show distinct effects of network degree, network range, communication, and identification on level of activism. An additional finding is that network (and network process) variables have effects on new activism that are independent of the effects of past activism. A theoretical discussion considers the implications of the stage of the cycle of protest and biographical availability in influencing these processes.

Canadian News Media Coverage of Climate Change: Historical Trajectories, Dominant Frames, and International Comparisons

We examine climate change news coverage from 1997 to 2010 in two Canadian national newspapers: the Globe and Mail and the National Post. The following questions guide our analysis: Why did the volume of climate change coverage rise and fall during the period? Focusing on the key period of 2007–2008, what kinds of issue categories, thematic frames, and rhetorical frames dominate the news discourse? Canadian news coverage of climate change is characterized by a series of peaks and troughs, combined with an overall increase in coverage. The volume of coverage appears to be primarily driven by national and international political events, more than by changes to national or global carbon emissions, or by other ecological factors. The Canadian news discourse about climate change is dominated by themes of government responsibility, policymaking, policy measures for mitigation, and ways to mitigate climate change.

Canadian news media and the cultural dynamics of multilevel climate governance

Links between national news outlets (Globe and Mail and National Post) and climate-change discourse are examined in order better to understand the cultural politics of Canadian involvement in climate governance. National news media use a narrow range of issue categories to interpret climate change to the public. Both news outlets also privilege national and international political spheres, with less attention to climate governance at the sub-national level. However, there are important differences between them. The Globe and Mail tends to focus on government responsibility, while the National Post tends to focus on climate science and the economic costs of addressing climate change. Four key periods (1999, 2002, 2006, and 2010) are examined in order to trace shifts in climate-change discourse. There has been a shift towards greater issue complexity over time, coupled with a growing polarisation of climate discourse across the two national news outlets.

Conflicting Climate Change Frames in a Global Field of Media Discourse

Reducing global emissions will require a global cosmopolitan culture built from detailed attention to conflicting national climate change frames (interpretations) in media discourse. The authors analyze the global field of media climate change discourse using 17 diverse cases and 131 frames. They find four main conflicting dimensions of difference: validity of climate science, scale of ecological risk, scale of climate politics, and support for mitigation policy. These dimensions yield four clusters of cases producing a fractured global field. Positive values on the dimensions show modest association with emissions reductions. Data-mining media research is needed to determine trends in this global field.