Mobilizing Threat: Measuring Discursive Changes in Frame Articulation in a Group of Early Tea Party Supporters

• In Event: 106 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Ideological Movements of the Left and Right

Abstract

In the social movement literature threat is often depicted as motivation for taking part in collective action. The costs of inaction, owing to a threat against the group in question, are weighed against the costs of taking action. The group’s resources and opportunities also weigh on this equation: in favor of action when they are more available and against action when they are less available. When groups already have many resources and opportunities, threat more directly drives mobilization. This paper tests that general theoretical connection: when the cost of taking action is higher, threats will be re-framed so that the cost of not taking action is also higher. This is achieved through micro-level processes of frame articulation that make threats seem more severe and more urgent, and connect them with protagonists and antagonists. These processes are measured across four waves of protest by the Tea Party – a largely middle-class, white, right-wing movement - that took place over 31 weeks in 2009. Data come from user comments on a conservative website, the FreeRepublic.com, and are aggregated into four periods, each containing a distinguishable wave of protest activity. By increasing the perceived cost of inaction, framing processes helped to sustain high levels of mobilization, despite an increase in the cost of participating in collective action. This research joins a growing body of work that looks more closely at the role threat plays in mobilization and answers calls for more attention to micro framing processes and changing in framing over time.

Author

• Joseph Lee Crane, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill