Identity Deployment, Social Movements, and the Battle over Terri Schiavo

• In Event: 583 - Regular Session. New Evidence on Identity, Activism, and Protest

Abstract

Despite scholarly interest in strategic action at the micro level, we know very little about how individuals strategically deploy identity in their political action apart from social movements or outside of the voting booth. Drawing 2,509 emails sent by individuals to Governor Jeb Bush regarding his efforts to reinsert the hydration and nutrition tubes of Terri Schiavo, we use a resource perspective to analyze when (and how) individuals deploy collective and personal identities in their efforts to encourage and dissuade Bush’s intervention on the Schiavo case as well as whether how individuals deploy identity varies over time. We find that almost half of the individuals emailing Bush invoke an identity and that the extent to which individuals align themselves with a largely collective varies according to their position on the issue, whether there is social movement mobilization, and the broader political context. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of our findings for research on identity and political action.

Authors

• Deana Rohlinger, Florida State University

• Christian Alexander Vaccaro, Indiana University-Pennsylvania

• Miriam Sessions, Florida State University

• Heather Mauney, Florida State University