Signal Transmission, Signal Reception: Drawing on Goffman and the Dual Process Framework to Theorize Protest Events

• In Event: 4376 - Meaning-Making through the Lens of Cultural Cognition

Abstract

Integrating cognitive social science research on dual process models with microsociological theories of interaction, I develop a heuristic to typologize communication pathways in protest events. The model accounts for both controlled and automatic signal transmission, and deliberate “Type II” and associative “Type I” cognition structuring signal reception. Empirically, I use this heuristic to analyze interactions during protest situations. I argue that the overemphasis on controlled signals and deliberate cognition, particularly from framing literature, has overlooked how automatic signals and associative cognition influence interaction. I position existing collective behavior and social movement research to reveal the ways scholars have explicitly or implicitly privileged one communication pathway at the expense of others. Then, I draw from my in-depth ethnography to situate empirical findings within the heuristic. In closing, I argue minimizing or excluding one pathway from explanatory primacy is something which needs to be made explicitly, taking into consideration both analytic warrant and empirical adequacy.

Author

• Justin Van Ness, University of Notre Dame