This dissertation focuses on the use of strategic communication in the context of contemporary environmental activism. It examines the case of Bold Nebraska, a grassroots advocacy group opposing the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline in the state of Nebraska. Such an analysis of activist communication informs several areas of research, including public relations theory and practice, social movement theory, and environmental communication. To understand the construction of strategic communication within such activism, this study employs a movement framing analysis, a media framing analysis, and a rhetorical analysis. A quantitative framing analysis of Bold Nebraska’s website communication against the pipeline during the five-year period of 2011 to 2015 assesses how activists craft and project strategic messages. A framing analysis of Bold Nebraska’s national media coverage during the same timeframe highlights the relationship between activist framing and mainstream news coverage. Finally, a rhetorical analysis of Bold Nebraska’s 2014 Harvest the Hope concert is provided to understand the role of rhetorical appeals in building an environmental activism metanarrative or master frame. Taken together, these three approaches provide both a more holistic means to considering environmental activism campaigns in the context of strategic communication, and fill in the gaps for understanding the interplay of social movement organizations, public relations, and persuasion. This study brings a framework of strategic advocacy framing to the realm of environmental politics, and builds upon this framework by considering the dynamic of populism in activism. It also explores the role of strategic communication in evolving a movement organization’s metanarrative as it toggles between short- and long-term goals. Finally, it identifies a civic environmental persuasion built upon the attributes of narrative, hyperlocalization, engagement, and bipartisanship in order to build broad support and influence public policy.

Esta pesquisa consiste em um estudo de caso realizado com jovens estudantes da Zona Leste de São Paulo que fizeram parte da mobilização secundarista de 2015, marcada pelas ocupações de escola. O objetivo da pesquisa foi investigar a formação de visões de mundo e as formas de engajamento político desses sujeitos, procurando relacioná-las aos elementos imediatos do seu cotidiano. Ao longo da dissertação, discute-se a relação desses jovens tanto com ativistas quanto com atores que compõe sua realidade local. Verificou-se que o envolvimento em um cursinho popular atuante na Zona Leste de São Paulo teve grande peso em seu processo de politização e que, a partir dos laços ali construídos, ligaram-se a uma rede mais ampla de novas formas de ativismo. Identifica-se também uma tensa relação com o conjunto de atores identificado como agentes da ordem: policiais, burocracia escolar, igreja e famílias. Por fim, acompanhando seu percurso de engajamento posterior à onda de ocupações escolares de 2015, percebe-se o rompimento desses jovens com a ideia de representação e a afinidade com repertórios autonomistas, bem como uma forte ligação com plano local. / This research consists of a case study made with young students from the east side of São Paulo who were part of a mobilization in 2015, marked by a wave of school occupations. The objective of the research was to investigate the formation of the students worldview and political engagement, relating them to the immediate elements of their daily life. Throughout the dissertation, we discuss their relationship with both activists and actors that are part of their local reality. It was verified that a community college course had a great influence in their process of politicization and that, from the bonds built there, they were connected to a wider network of new forms of activism. It also identifies a tense relationship with the set of actors identified as \"agents of order\": police officers, school bureaucracy, church and families. Finally, following their path of engagement after the wave of school occupations, one can see the youth breakup with the affinity and idea of autonomist representation repertoires, as well as a strong connection with local plan.

Motivés par des articles et des discussions récentes sur les valeurs monétaires par rapport aux valeurs sociales, j'ai un grand intérêt à étudier l'impact des valeurs sociales ou de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises (“CSR”) sur les valeurs des entreprises. Le chapitre un et le chapitre deux étudient tous deux l'activisme des actionnaires sur les questions de CSR, tout en ayant des objectifs différents. Le premier chapitre étudie les propositions d'actionnaires déposées par des fonds socialement responsables (“SRIs”) en utilisant un échantillon collecté à la main. Le premier chapitre fournit des statistiques descriptives sur ces propositions et examine les caractéristiques de l'entreprise cible. Deuxièmement, à l'aide de la méthodologie de l'étude des événements, il examine la réaction du marché autour du dépôt de la proposition et constate une réaction positive du marché à ces propositions. Troisièmement, il examine l’horizon à plus long terme et étudie l’impact à long terme de ces propositions sur la valeur marchande, la performance opérationnelle et la performance sociale des entreprises. Le deuxième chapitre étudie un échantillon plus large de propositions d'actionnaires déposées par différentes parties, notamment des investisseurs institutionnels (par exemple, fonds de pension, fonds SRI), des syndicats, des fondations, des groupes religieux et des particuliers. Le chapitre deux se concentre plus sur l'identification de l'impact des différents déclarants sur le résultat de la proposition, et les résultats montrent que les investisseurs institutionnels tels que les fonds SRI et les fonds de pension sont des déclarants plus performants. Si une proposition est déposée par des fonds SRI ou des fonds de pension, elle a beaucoup plus de chances de réussir et recevoir des votes plus favorables. La réaction du marché aux activités de dépôt de propositions est également positive pour ces déposants et a également une incidence à long terme sur les entreprises cibles. Le chapitre trois étudie la performance des fonds SRI. En choisissant une période de temps particulière (c’est-à-dire la crise financière), elle tente de séparer la performance des investissements des fonds des rendements générés par des groupes spécifiques d’entreprises (c’est-à-dire les entreprises ayant de bonnes notes CSR). Les résultats montrent que ces SRIs génèrent des rendements inférieurs à ceux des fonds conventionnels pendant la crise, alors que ces entreprises obtiennent en moyenne des rendements plus élevés pendant la crise, comme le suggèrent d'autres études (Lins et al. 2017). Cependant, ce résultat ne persiste pas après la crise financière dans l'échantillon correspondant. La volatilité des flux des SRIs est inférieure à celle des fonds conventionnels. L'analyse de la sensibilité des flux dans une régression linéaire par morceaux montre que les SRIs attirent plus de flux que les fonds conventionnels après avoir contrôlé divers autres facteurs. Une analyse plus poussée montre que les SRIs ont tendance à avoir un horizon d'investissement plus long et à vendre moins pendant la crise. Il aborde également les raisons potentielles et les motivations des investisseurs en examinant les flux de fonds SRI, les sensibilités aux performances des flux, horizons des investisseurs et les activités de vente pendant la crise. / Motivated by papers and recent talks on monetary values versus social values, I have great interest in studying how social values or corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) could impact firm values. Recent studies have shown that there are mainly three potential channels, through which CSR affects firm value. Firstly, employees help create firm value. Employee welfare is part of CSR (measured by MSCI ESG KLD Statistics, known as KLD scores), and employee satisfaction improves firm value shown by positive long-term abnormal stock market returns. (eg. Edmans 2011) Secondly, customers strongly link to firm value. Product quality and safety are part of CSR, and product characteristics are the main reasons directly linked to customer purchasing decisions, especially for firms in manufacturing and retail industries. Moreover, part of the customers may be socially conscious and are sensitive to firms’ actions towards environmental, community or human rights issues. They may form updated opinion of the firm based on their CSR activities and thus influence their purchasing decisions. Papers find that firms with more customer awareness benefit more from CSR. (eg. Servaes and Tamayo 2013) Thirdly, investors are associated with firm value. Investors, especially socially-conscious investors help discipline the firms’ CSR activities. Shareholder proposal is one good venue where they raise their voice and engage in the firms. Investors could use exit strategy to sell their shares, and changes in investment flows could affect firms’ value. (eg. Bialkowski & Starks 2016) The third channel, investors’ engagements in CSR issues in the firm and their association with firm value implications, as well as the related SRI investment performance are the main focus of this dissertation.

Sir William Macpherson's conclusion - following his public inquiry into the racist murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 - that the Metropolitan Police was 'institutionally racist', was a seminal moment for policing in Britain. The publication of the Macpherson report in 1999 has been rightly regarded as a victory for the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign (SLFC), whose activities had been crucial in building pressure on the newly-elected Labour Government to hold a public inquiry into the Metropolitan Police's murder investigation. However, to focus solely on the Lawrence case, and the SLFC, is to obscure the existence of a longer struggle waged by black Londoners to expose the racism that had affected their experience of policing since the Second World War. This thesis explores the development of grassroots political activism within London's Afro-Caribbean community around the issue of policing from 1945 to 1993. Using material from local community archives, this thesis represents the first attempt at documenting the history of race and policing in London from the perspective of the capital's Afro-Caribbean population. Moreover, by taking the end of the Second World War as its starting point, it also breaks new ground in charting the way Afro-Caribbean people in London organised politically in opposition to racist policing prior to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Ever since people of Afro-Caribbean descent began to settle in London in increasing numbers in the aftermath of the Second World War, they have continually expressed concern about the way they were policed. While opposition to policing initially emerged in a highly unorganised form, this was fundamentally altered by the arrival of the British black power movement in the late 1960s. Despite its short existence, black power's emphasis upon independent black grassroots political activism outlived the movement and became a feature of the way black Londoners' challenged racist policing during the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore, this thesis contends that the grassroots political campaign that developed around the case of Stephen Lawrence cannot be viewed in isolation from the historical efforts of black people in London to expose racism within the Metropolitan Police.

Submitted by Sandra Pereira (srpereira@ufrrj.br) on 2017-01-16T15:17:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2015 - Alex Brito Ribeiro.pdf: 1171090 bytes, checksum: 89df7e037339ba23a87b06af6c044370 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-16T15:17:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2015 - Alex Brito Ribeiro.pdf: 1171090 bytes, checksum: 89df7e037339ba23a87b06af6c044370 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-27 / Who was Fabio Luz? This work has the purpose of to clarify this, among others aspects of Fabio Luz life. Borned at Bahia, resident at the north side of Rio de Janeiro city, for many years, physician, writer, journalist, literary critic, teacher and foremost anarchist. Through his work we analyzed many aspects of: critical of the society, political militancy, the Rio de Janeiro city and its everyday, and the literature, that in Luz work has a very clear anarchist aesthetic. Besides newspapers and flyers, we used as main source of this work the novel, Ide?logo, written by Luz in 1903, the novel brings, not only the aesthetic side of the anarchist art , but as also helps to understanding many aspects of the Rio de Janeiro history / Quem foi F?bio Luz? A presente disserta??o tem como proposta elucidar este e outros aspectos acerca da vida de F?bio Luz. Baiano de nascimento, morador da Zona Norte da cidade do Rio de Janeiro por muitos anos, m?dico, escritor, jornalista, cr?tico liter?rio, professor e acima de tudo anarquista. Por meio de sua produ??o textual, analisamos diversos aspectos como: cr?tica ? sociedade, a milit?ncia pol?tica, a cidade do Rio de Janeiro e o seu cotidiano, assim como a literatura que, em Luz, assume uma est?tica libert?ria bem definida. Al?m dos jornais e folhetos, utilizamos como fonte principal de an?lise, o romance publicado por Luz em 1903, o Ide?logo n?o apenas demostra esse aspecto est?tico da arte anarquista, mas como tamb?m contribui para uma compreens?o da hist?ria do Rio de Janeiro em diversos ?ngulos

High-stakes testing has grown in scope and impact in recent years, as accountability decisions regarding funding, school sanctions, and teacher evaluations often depend on standardized test results. The shift toward more stringent and punitive testing mandates has not gone unchallenged however, as pockets of resistance have emerged among teachers, parents, and scholars, and a growing "opt-out" movement has picked up steam nationwide. Teachers in particular have played a critical role in resistance to high-stakes testing, even while adhering to these same policies in their professional roles. This study examines resistance to standardized testing via the 'opt-out' movement organizing process. I specifically look at teachers' participation in organizing and resistance, and how positions as teachers and sometimes parents influence their participation. I frame the project with a post-structuralism lens, utilizing the Deleuzoguattarian concept of the rhizome to illustrate the complex and connected nature of teachers' involvement in this social movement.

This dissertation examines how gender operates as agencies for women’s environmental justice activism. I contend that women’s activism, often taking place through collaborative and collective means, presents new opportunities to theorize rhetorical agency that include women-centric and leaderless forms of grassroots organizing. To this end, I explore various agencies for women’s collaborative environmental communication—motherhood, eco-spirituality, and political calls for recognition—that work to test the boundary conditions of rhetorical studies in ways that find empowerment and resistance in a collective rather than in any one particular person. In developing these accounts, I construct a framework that emphasizes the agentic capabilities possible through collaborative rhetorics of resistance—the communicative performances of defiance and empowerment put forth by groups of people that often result in the articulation of collective identities, the challenging of dominant structures and institutions of power, and work to inspire mutual critique and reflection in others. Theories of rhetorical agency assist in documenting and illuminating the ways speakers navigate discursive and material constraints as they bring their audience to action, but often do so by privileging the rhetoric of individual (male) speakers. By exploring collaborative rhetorics of resistance, this dissertation project tests the boundary conditions of rhetorical agency and generates a more comprehensive understanding of how loose networks of people enter into, take part in, and possibly redirect the course of environmental deliberations. This dissertation project is focused on the ways in which women rhetorically collaborate to craft collective subjectivities, protest environmental threats to their families and communities, and inspire mutual critique and reflection in others.

Logo currently holds a self-described monopoly as the "Gay Channel for America." Logo stands alone as the single most concentrated national-level vehicle of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) visibility in the post millennial television era. The Logo Channel has reaped financial rewards from its strategy as a business entity, as LGBT American television viewers embraced its presence as a signifier to America that gays and lesbians have finally "made it". First, any claim to a monopoly deserves critical attention for its place in mainstream television, for its business practices, and for the power it holds in representing and targeting LGBT audiences. Second, Logo's construction of its audience is an extremely important window into current perceptions of LGBT identity, history, and progress. Third, Logo's ability to capitalize on gay and lesbian visibility in American culture and the rhetoric of "inclusiveness" are important historical and cultural moments to explore the political costs and benefits of these strategies-in business practices, programming content, and advertisements. In this study, I argue that Logo does not capitalize on its television presence to participate in LGBT political, economic, and social equality. Despite its significant visibility and messages of "inclusiveness" in American popular culture, Logo contributes to the perpetuation of negative and narrow stereotypes of consumerist gay culture, as it marginalizes ethnic minorities and women, through a variety of conformist, self-serving practices that undermine the libratory opportunity it holds for its LGBT viewers. Chapter Two "Another Lost Opportunity" examines a brief history of the cable television industry, the television business model and the representations of gays and lesbians on television to draw a parallel social history centered on visibility. Chapter Three "Like Taking Candy from a Baby" examines three reoccurring series on Logo: Noah's Arc, Can't Get a Date, and Round-Trip Ticket. Chapter Four "Easy as Shooting Fish In a Barrel" examines the histories of 1) television advertising, 2) the risks and benefits of advertising on Logo, and 3) the history of gay and lesbian print advertising. This history lays the foundation for 4) exploring contemporary constructions of Logo's target market as the "ideal demographic."

In our current internet-driven society, social media platforms act as the most central tool for communication and social activism. Through my observations of the #MeToo movement, I argue that despite success in visibility, external factors stemming from social media have prevented the movement’s development beyond online platforms. These factors include Slacktivism, the online presence and power of celebrities, and popular feminism and it’s commodification. Considering that the #MeToo movement is ongoing, my observations of the movement thus far aim to answer the question if social media based movements, such as #MeToo, will produce any structural change within and beyond the entertainment industry.

This dissertation analyzes the politics of representing Mayan ethnicity in Guatemalan tourism. Most importantly, it demonstrates the importance of cultural representations in tourism events to local Mayas themselves. It does this by demonstrating how tourism organizations are, in some cases, dynamically challenging long-held stereotypes of Guatemala's Mayan populations and creating new economic resources that are helping to empower local Mayan communities in Guatemala's second largest city, Quetzaltenango. However, through this examination it is also evident that not all tourism organizations in Quetzaltenango share these goals or produce these particular types of social and economic changes. How a tourism organization affects change on social and economic landscapes is often determined by its power to make its goals a reality. By examining tourism organizations with a wide range of ethnic and economic characteristics (be they for-profit, non-profit, indigenous, or non-indigenous), and how these characteristics are managed and manipulated, this dissertation analyzes how tourism organizations accumulate the power to make some changes in Quetzaltenango's social and economic landscapes more possible than others. Additionally, within anthropological literature there is rich material that examines the foundation and growth of indigenous movements in Latin America and the ability of these movements to mobilize political support for collective indigenous rights, cultural diversity, and the celebration of ethnic pride as well as to overcome indigenous political marginalization and poverty. However, within this body of work there is rarely mention of the political potential of tourism to mobilize support, celebrate diversity, and to overcome indigenous marginalization and poverty. This dissertation also demonstrates how the political potential of tourism can help indigenous movements accomplish these goals.