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Book part
Publication date: 6 July 2021

Thomas Elliott and Jennifer Earl

Youth political engagement is often ignored and downplayed by adults, who often embrace a youth deficit model. The youth deficit model downplays the voices and unique experiences…

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Youth political engagement is often ignored and downplayed by adults, who often embrace a youth deficit model. The youth deficit model downplays the voices and unique experiences of youth in favor of adult-led and adult-centered experiences. Like other historical deficit models, the youth deficit model also provides permission to adults to speak for or about youth, even when not asked to speak for them. We refer to this powerful construction of youth interests by adults as mediation. Fortunately, online advocacy could offer an unmediated route to political engagement for youth as digital natives. Using a unique dataset, we investigate whether online protest spaces offer an unmediated experience for youth to learn about and engage in political protest. However, we find that youth engagement, and especially unmediated youth engagement, is rare among advocacy digital spaces, though it varies by movement, SMO-affiliation, and age groups. Based on our findings, we argue that, rather than youth being primarily responsible for any alleged disengagement, the lack of online spaces offering opportunities for youth to take ownership of their own engagement likely discourages youth from participating in traditional political advocacy and renders the level of youth engagement an admirable accomplishment of young people.

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Social Movements and Media
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-098-3

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Book part
Publication date: 19 July 2021

Thomas V. Maher and Jennifer Earl

Prior social movement research has focused on the role that axes of inequality – particularly race, class, gender, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ…

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Prior social movement research has focused on the role that axes of inequality – particularly race, class, gender, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) status – play for who participates and how they do so. Age is another important axis of inequality. The pervasiveness of a youth deficit model, which casts young people as deficient and requiring benevolent adult tutelage, is of particular concern for youth. This chapter assesses whether the internalization of the deficit model influences young people's activism and how they perceive their engagement. Drawing on interviews with 40 high school and college students from a southwestern US city, we find that many young people have internalized deficit-model assumptions, affecting when and how they participated. This was most evident among high school students, who limited their participation because they were “not old enough” or gravitated toward more “age-appropriate” forms of activism. Interestingly, we found college students were more willing to engage in online activism but also felt compelled to do significant research on issues before participating, thereby distancing themselves from the deficit model's assumptions of their political naivety. Finally, some participants felt discouraged by the perceived ineffectiveness of protest, which resonated with deficit model narratives of the futility of youth engagement. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the impacts of an internalized deficit model as well as considering age as an axis of inequality in activism. Youth engagement is best supported by seeing young people as capable actors with unique interests, capacities, and points of view.

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The Politics of Inequality
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-363-0

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Book part
Publication date: 22 December 2017

Thomas V. Maher and Jennifer Earl

Growing interest in the use of digital technologies and a Putnam-inspired debate about youth engagement has drawn researchers from outside of the study of social movements into…

Abstract

Growing interest in the use of digital technologies and a Putnam-inspired debate about youth engagement has drawn researchers from outside of the study of social movements into research on the topic. This interest in youth protest participation has, in turn, developed into a substantial area of research of its own. While offering important research contributions, we argue that these areas of scholarship are often not well grounded in classic social movement theory and research, instead focusing on new media and/or the relationship between activism and other forms of youth engagement. This chapter seeks to correct this by drawing on interviews with 40 high school and college students from a moderately sized southwestern city to examine whether traditional paths to youth activism (i.e., family, friends, and institutions) have changed or eroded as online technology use and extra-institutional engagement among youth has risen. We find that youth continue to be mobilized by supportive family, friends, and institutional opportunities, and that the students who were least engaged are missing these vital support networks. Thus, it is not so much that the process driving youth activism has changed, but that some youth are not receiving support that has been traditionally necessary to spur activism. This offers an important reminder for scholars studying youth and digital activism and youth participation more broadly that existing theory and research about traditional pathways to activism needs to be evaluated in contemporary research.

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Social Movements and Media
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-098-3

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Book part
Publication date: 18 April 2017

Thomas Elliott, Jennifer Earl and Thomas V. Maher

The majority of research on intersectionality and social movements has focused on agenda-setting or internal identity processes. However, little research has focused on the ways…

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The majority of research on intersectionality and social movements has focused on agenda-setting or internal identity processes. However, little research has focused on the ways in which social movements present themselves as intersectional, particularly in recruitment, which is important for building inclusive movements. In this chapter, we begin to outline a theory of movement recruitment based around intersectional identities that draws on work on coalitional recruitment and concepts from framing. In particular, we argue that “identity bridging,” which occurs when two or more identities are linked during recruitment attempts, is a potential tool for inclusive and intersectional recruitment. We evaluate the extent to which movements engage in this style of recruitment using data on intersectional youth identities acknowledged on web-addressable advocacy spaces. Youth are at a critical moment in their identity development, and so it is especially important to engage them in ways that respect their developing intersectional identities. We find that, overall, most movement sites do not engage in identity bridging, and those that do rarely move beyond bridging the youth identities with one other aspect of identity. Based on our theory, this would help to explain why so many movements struggle with issues of inclusivity.

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Non-State Violent Actors and Social Movement Organizations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-190-2

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Book part
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Katie Wright and Julie McLeod

This opening chapter of the edited volume, Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and Their Advocates, explores activism and advocacy – by…

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This opening chapter of the edited volume, Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and Their Advocates, explores activism and advocacy – by and for children and young people. It begins by considering how activism has been understood in the scholarly literature, before making a case for a broad and inclusive conceptualisation of what counts as this particular form of social action. Relatedly, it examines the contours of the relationship between activism and advocacy, drawing attention to the ways in which these concepts converge, an issue that is particularly salient when applied to the categories of child and youth. Themes that emerge in research on child and youth activism are then drawn out and we identify some of the key issues that animate this work across various disciplines. These include observations that young people have long been central to social movements, the role of social media in youth activism, the nature of child and adult relationships in social movement organisations, and some of the issues that arise for young activists in relation to intersectional identities. To this we add debates regarding the politics of recognition, questions of voice and agency, and responsibility and their temporal registers. This discussion also foreshadows themes that emerge in the chapters across this volume. Finally, we offer a reflection on some of the conceptual issues raised when considering the book in its entirety, including those of voice, responsibility for the future, the politics of possibility and hope, and the many different forms and practices that activism and advocacy for and by young people take.

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Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and their Advocates
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-469-5

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Book part
Publication date: 24 October 2022

Lisa Leitz

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Race and Space
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-725-2

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Book part
Publication date: 12 July 2023

Kathleen A. Ragon and Daisy Verduzco Reyes

The scholarly conversation about insider and outsider positionality in observational research is long, rich, and often contentious. Debates about the benefits and challenges of…

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The scholarly conversation about insider and outsider positionality in observational research is long, rich, and often contentious. Debates about the benefits and challenges of studying sites where researchers share insider identities with participants, in particular, have yielded insights about power, inequality, and the uniquely relational character of observational research. In this chapter, we enter this conversation by relating our experiences with outsider-ness and insider-ness while studying social movements. We draw on two ethnographic case studies of social movement organizations within higher education settings. We identify some of the challenges faced while qualitatively studying identity-based movements embedded within institutions, specifically (1) being mindful of and negotiating the impact of researcher identity and how it relates to those of the subjects; (2) determining one's level of participation within the movement being studied; and (3) securing research approval and access to data. We offer suggestions for how researchers might think through these challenges in their own work.

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Methodological Advances in Research on Social Movements, Conflict, and Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-887-7

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Book part
Publication date: 22 December 2017

Jackson Bird and Thomas V. Maher

How do you get people – particularly young people – to engage with social and political issues? Activists and academics alike have been plagued by this question for some time, and…

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How do you get people – particularly young people – to engage with social and political issues? Activists and academics alike have been plagued by this question for some time, and answers to it have ranged from greater organizational involvement to framing. Another possibility is meeting youth where they are at; that is, connecting youth’s existing interests in popular culture with broader social problems and issues. A group that is doing just that is the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a story-fueled nonprofit organization that turns fans into heroes. In this chapter, we trace the development of the Harry Potter fan community, the stories’ resonance with fans, and how the HPA has drawn on the community and the story for mobilization. We argue that the HPA leverages culture in two ways that are relevant for social movements and political communication scholars. The HPA is able to tap into the fan community for bloc recruitment using its ties and connections to media – in this case, the fictional story – as a point of mobilization. Additionally, the HPA is able to bloc recruit from mass society – a process they refer to as “cultural acupuncture” – by strategically connecting the story with social justice issues when cultural attention is at its peak. We conclude with a discussion of the HPA’s impact on its members and how bloc recruitment and cultural acupuncture may be relevant for other fan communities.

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Social Movements and Media
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-098-3

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Article
Publication date: 1 January 1966

The Secretary of State, having given notice under section 29(1) of the Prices and Incomes Act 1966(a) that he was considering the making of this Order, and having considered…

17

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The Secretary of State, having given notice under section 29(1) of the Prices and Incomes Act 1966(a) that he was considering the making of this Order, and having considered representations duly made, in exercise of the powers conferred on him by the said section 29, and by section 25(7) and (8) of the said Act, hereby makes the following Order:‐

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Managerial Law, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0558

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