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While social media data are used increasingly in studies of social movements, social media evolves far more rapidly than academic research and publication. This chapter argues that researchers should adopt historical and archival approaches to social media data. Treating social media data as an “instant archive” – one that is self-curated, is co-constituted, and changes rapidly – we caution researchers to pay attention to the features of this archive and their implications for working with the data therein. Applying insights from recent discussions of archival methods for social science research to the specific features of social media data, we explore how platform features, repressive effects, and user innovations affect the content of the instant archive. We then offer strategies for researchers' methodological approaches, including how best to select units of analysis and platforms, how to collect and interpret archival materials, and how to identify silences in the data.

Intercountry adoptions (hereafter ICAs) in the USA are a form of sale of children. According to international policy, sale of children is an illicit social practice that involves improper financial gains by at least one party. Sale of children is a threat to legitimate ICA. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the policy and practice of ICAs in the USA, including pricing arrangements, demonstrate that US ICAs, which can have humanitarian aims and be legitimate forms of family development, comprise sale of children.

Internet searches and e-mail inquiries were used to obtain ICA cost data for a randomised sample of 10 per cent of the agencies in the USA that facilitate ICAs.

Cost information was obtained from only 25 per cent of the sample, suggesting lack of transparency in and available information about monetary costs of US ICAs. A range of US$12,000 to $40,000 suggests that US ICAs are expensive and costs vary. Large, undisclosed fees in the form of “required donations”, agency fees, and extensive foreign travel requirements imply third party economic gains are made through US ICA transactions.

US ICA agencies should disclose costs and employ transparent practices. US policies regulating ICAs should be clarified and strengthened. The US Government should ratify, implement, and enforce major children’s rights international policy standards.

International demand for adopted children may encourage child trafficking, child laundering, and kidnapping for profit (see Smolin, 2005), putting children, adoptive families, and birth communities at risk of breaches of basic human rights.

No study has offered systematic analysis of monetary costs of US ICAs and linked this analysis to policy and legitimacy of social practices.

The rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), as an intentionally intersectional movement, challenges us to consider the ways in which BLM is reimagining the lines of Black activism and the Black Liberation Movement. BLM may be considered the “next wave” of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), guiding how and with whom the movement will progress. We use a content analysis of public statements and interviews of the founding members from October 2014 to October 2016 to discuss the ways in which the founders of BLM frame the group’s actions. We bring together the critical feminist concept of intersectionality with framing theory to show how the founders of BLM have strategically framed the movement as one that honors past Black Liberation struggles, but transforms traditional framing of those struggles to include all Black lives inclusive of differences based on gender, sexual orientation, age, nationality, or criminal status.

Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.