Meet Them Where They Are: Frame Analysis and the Self as Anchor of Social Movement Communication

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Abstract

This paper argues for the relevance of Eviatar Zerubavel’s microsociology to a frame analysis of social movements. It critiques frame alignment scholarship for disproportionate attention to micromobilizations at the expense of questions of individual attention and reception. Zerubavel’s trilogy of a sociology of attention, a less canonized tradition of frame analysis, shifts sociological focus from organizational considerations to a nuanced consideration of the relation between frames and social cognition (Zerubavel 1991; 2006; 201). Zerubavel’s microsociology is particularly relevant to studies of social movement communication, bringing attention to the role of personal experience and Goffman’s (1974) warning of the political difficulties of attentional socialization. The paper develops three Zerubavelian themes relevant to a microsociology of social movement communication around the dynamics of moving social movement claims from the background to the foreground: 1) figuring the self into a social movement; 2) reverse attentional socialization; and 3) keying between accommodation and social criticalness. I draw on ethnographic data of social movement communication to demonstrate attempts made to conjure, in emotionally resonant ways, an “anchoring” (Goffman 1974:247-51) that can fix a specific relationship, daily object, or everyday practice as a proxy of awareness to social movement communication. I conclude that frame alignment scholars should address questions of attention and reception, aligning with Zerubavel to argue that a shift in focus from organizational questions to questions about attentional experience enhances microsociology of social movements.

Author

• JL Johnson, Bethel University