3/10/2008
Andy Andrews (Sociology, UNC), Making the News: How Social Movement Organizations Shape the Public Agenda
Increasingly, scholars have come to see the news media playing a
crucial role shaping whether social movements are able to bring about
broader social change. By conferring attention to issues, claims, and
their supporters, the news media can shape the public agenda thereby
influencing public opinion, authorities and elites. Why are some social
movement organizations more successful than others at advancing their
claims in the media? Specifically, what organizational, tactical, and
issue characteristics enhance media attention? I combine detailed
organizational data from a representative survey of 187 local
environmental organizations in North Carolina with complete news coverage
of those organizations in eleven major daily newspapers in the two years
following the survey (2,143 articles). Rather than focusing on
confrontational, volunteer-led groups that advocate on behalf of novel
issues, analyses reveal that local news media favor professional and
formalized groups that employ "routine" tactics working on issues that
overlap with newspapers' attention to local economic growth and
well-being.
Kenneth (Andy) Andrews is Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on
social movements, political institutions, and social change. Andrews is
completing projects on the environmental movement in North Carolina and a
national study of local Sierra Club leaders and organizations. In another
project, he is studying tactical and organizational diffusion and the
dynamics of local protest campaigns through a study of the 1960 sit-ins by
black college students. His book - Freedom is a Constant Struggle
(Chicago, 2004) - examined the influence of the civil rights movement on
electoral politics, school desegregation, and social policies.
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