Writing in Strong Opposition: How Social Movements Use Emotional Rhetoric to Counter Shifts in Political Power

• In Event: 1545 - Emotions and Morality

Abstract

How do social movements respond to a dramatic loss of political access and power? Previous research argues that movements need to adopt more assertive tactics like electioneering and they tend to engage in more contentious behavior, but these perspectives tend to overlook how emotional rhetoric is sequenced not only by the activists but participants of the public debate in general including state actors and corporate lobbyists. To advance our understanding of position taking in the broader policy field, we analyze a novel collection of over 250,000 public comments submitted to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) using a synthesis of computational and qualitative approaches. We find evidence that the organized environmental groups opposing the intentional discharge of methane gas into the atmosphere by extraction companies, a practice known as flaring, shift from using technical language to using more emotive rhetoric when they become members of the political opposition. Moreover, this rhetoric is drawn from a pre-existing milieu of emotive language created by unorganized, individualized public comments. These rhetorical dynamics suggest that when movements lose an ally in power they might employ emotive discursive tactics while taking assertive action. Moreover, they do make this shift with an eye towards organizing the discourse of the participants sympathetic to their cause. Analyzing emotional sequencing helps us trace position taking in a dynamic way as opponents, proponents, and sympathizers try to influence policy outcomes through public debate. These findings have implications to study the positioning of movement actors in policy fields as the distribution of power is being reconfigured. They also offer insights into analyzing political polarization where partisan politics take the front row of discussion.

Authors

• Didem Turkoglu, New York University-Abu Dhabi

• Selen Güler, University of Washington

• Daniel Karell, Yale University