The study is concerned with the recurrent diffusion of novelty in American higher education. By novelty is meant any body of thought, organizational form, and spontaneous phenomenon of collective behaviour which is perceived as new by members of academic institutions. The general thesis of the work is that the dissemination of novelty typically occurs along lines of decreasing academic prestige. This view is derived from a host of porpositions about the relationship of institutional prestige with academic talent, the creation and communication of novelty, the academic marketplace, permissiveness, imitation, and embarrassment. This thesis is verified for the interinstitutional diffusion of the antiwar student movement of the nineteen sixties and early seventies. The central' hypothesis of this case study is that the more prestigious an academic institution was at the time of the birth of the movement, the sooner some of its students initially protested against American involvement in the Vietnam war. Institutional prestige, the independent variable, is operationalized in terms of "objective" indices. The dependent variable is the degree to which students in an institution were relatively earlier in initially protesting than students in other institutions. The antiwar student protests used to test the hypothesis were collected from The New York Times Index. For each institution that was reported, only the first or earliest campus protest was considered. It is assumed that the criteria governing the newspaper's selection of protests were the same for the entire duration of the movement. Two counter-hypotheses are also examined. It is proposed that the larger an institution was at the time of the birth of the movement, the less time it took for some of its students to initially protest against the American involvement in the Vietnam war. It is also hypothesized that the older the institution, the longer it took before some of its students first protested against this military participation abroad. The results provide, at best, moderate support to the main hypothesis of the case study while flatly rejecting its counter-hypotheses. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

Ad hoc social movement coalitions are made up of diverse groups that come together to maximise the use of limited resources. Once formed, they face a dilemma. Coalition logic holds that given the limited time frame and instrumental objectives of the organisation, resources should be disproportionately invested in the visible sphere of action. However, this instrumental emphasis ignores the need to invest resources in the 'submerged' sphere of membership intercommunication. As a result tensions which have their root in divergent ideologies, traditions and histories of resistance can threaten the coalition's collective identity. This thesis is about one such organisation, the No! To APEC (NTA) coalition, one of three groups that made up the movement to oppose the APEC Economic Leader's Meeting in Vancouver held in November 1997. NTA, made up of small leftwing grassroots groups, built a campaign around resistance to "imperialist globalisation." It organised community education, an international conference and a march and rally. Although it succeeded in meeting its objectives, a fracture occurred between the largest and most consolidated member group and the other unconsolidated grouping made up of individuals and representatives of small organisations. The fracture caused a disconnection between the local and the international priorities set by the organisation at its outset. In this study I examine the process that led to this outcome. In particular I identify the importance of establishing a capacity for reflexively monitoring the actions and interactions of members. While consensus is not a pre-requisite for solidarity, disputes arising from different perspectives and membership tactics may jeopardise organisational unity. Providing a limited space for evaluating conflicting validity claims and organisational dynamics may help to preserve unity during the active phase of a coalition's mobilisation. The methods used to obtain data for this study were participant observation and interviewing. I spent six months as an activist-researcher with the coalition and I interviewed activists from the three main APEC opposition groups. Although the main focus of this study is on the political and organisational evolution of the NTA coalition, I broaden the discussion to argue that ad hoc coalitions play an important role in generating 'social capital' or 'social movement connectivity.' Social solidarity generated in the course of short-term political action increases the potential for further action mobilisation in social movement networks and communities. In the final part of the thesis I review literature on globalisation and social movements. Combined with what has been learned about coalitions in the previous chapters, this exercise provides a context for examining the APEC opposition movement and, by extension, the prospects for building transnational movements and a counter-hegemonic historical bloc against imperialist globalisation. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M. Dev. (Development & Management)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / The manifestation of violence during the constitutionally protected protest action is highly questionable and unexpected feature of, the democratic dispensation in South Africa. Moreover, the right to protest is provided with strong restrictions to violence. Literature has publicised the reasons advanced for these fierce violent public protests dominating the democratic state and they are amid the lack of service delivery, maladministration and political squabbles. However, the geographic area of the protests questions the legitimacy of the so called service delivery protests. Notwithstanding, the recent statistics that show an upward increase in the accessibility of basic services by South Africans. Thus, this study dismisses the idea that the fierce public protests are as a result of a lack of service delivery, maladministration or political squabbles. Considering the location of the protests which is mostly in informal settlements close to metropolitan cities where some services have been provided. Whereas, the rural communities that receive very minimal, and to some extent no services have recorded very few protests linked to service delivery. Therefore, this study locates the violent public protests in the demonstration effect due to the geographical area and the advanced influence of media. The study used scholarship analysis to scrutinise the textual data gathered on the rationale underlying the violent public protests in South Africa’s globally-acclaimed democratic dispensation.

This thesis investigates US state level politics framing of the BLM protests during 2020, by inductively identifying frames and then proceeding to study if and on what grounds securitization occurs in these. Press statements, interviews and documents from eight Mayors and Governors in six of the states where the protests have been the most prominent are analyzed. From this material, four frames have been identified: the alienated outsider frame, the constructive rage frame, the limited guardian frame, and the desecuritizing frame. Recent developments in securitization theory investigate human life and dignity as a reference object, making a case for integrating humanitarianism in terms of grounds for justifying extraordinary measures. Three grounds for securitization are investigated empirically in the identified frames: state, social and humanitarian security. The study concludes that whilst both state security and to a lesser degree humanitarian security are detected in the identified frames, societal security seems to be the most prominent. This suggests that large-scale identities are the most common reference objects in the treated context. Further research is encouraged, especially in terms of distinguishing potential frame alignment processes by looking at a greater number of states over a longer period of time.

This thesis investigates the relationship between contemporary climate protest movements (Extinction Rebellion and Fridays For Future) and governmental bodies in European countries that declared a climate emergency in 2019. The primary contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate how emerging communication practices by these movements compare to the perceived influence of such practices among political decisionmakers in their governing bodies’ votes for a climate emergency declaration. Twitter content (tweets by movement accounts) surrounding protest actions of the climate movements was coded using concepts deduced from theoretical literature of participation, media and communication. Themes induced from this data were also used for coding. A thematic analysis of empirical interview text from semi-structured interviews of nine politicians in eight governmental bodies (six German city councils, that of Innsbruck, Austria and the Swiss cantonal parliament of Vaud) on this subject matter was done similarly. Relational thematic analyses of both datasets influenced the coding of one another. A frame analysis grounded in these data studied the use of social media imagery and text by the two movements. Another look at the interview data reflects the influence these movements had on climate emergency declarations via comparison of politicians’ stated impressions of the movements’ participation/influences with formations of tweeted movement frames. The data support the hypothesis that citizens engage via the connective power of personalized participatory culture on social media, enabling political participation. Today, we see a shift away from a political logic of social movements abiding to strong shared identity and meaning through frames of collective action. Instead, a social media logic, which aims to achieve the same functions, operates in loosely networked movements based on individualized frames of youth identity. This ‘connective identity’ bridges the participatory culture of social media with offline political participation in the streets and halls of power.

This study examines the news media's construction of protests. Previous research has found that the news media demonizes and marginalizes protests. Protesters are framed in a highly negative fashion and primarily categorized as "violent." This study employed focus groups, agenda setting and framing theories to analyze this phenomenon. Previous research has been primarily quantitative in nature and thus qualitative research will provide a more in-depth understanding of this phenomenon. This study supports the findings of prior research but offers new insights. The implications of this study suggests that the news media can influence what people think about and how they think about it. Additionally, the news media frame protesters in a negative manner. Protesters are framed as violent and deviant. This negative framing both helps and hurts the protesters' cause. Lastly, this study found the news media to maintain the status quo in this society

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abstract / toc / History / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The involvement of women in both conventional and unconventional forms of political participation in South Africa has over the past 10 years, and often at present, been experienced as problematic and limited. Exacerbating the problem of limited access and information, the study of, and literature about, women's participation in unconventional forms of politics have also been limited. It is the aim of this study to contribute to our knowledge in this area. This study investigates women's participation in unconventional politics between 1991 and 2001. This period is specifically important, as it makes possible the examination of trends in women's political participation before and after the democratic transition in 1994. This makes it possible for us to speculate about the influence of transition on women's political participation. I propose and evaluate two mam hypotheses in which I; firstly, expect women's participation in protest politics to decrease between 1991 and 2001, and secondly, expect to find women's levels of participation in protest to be consistently lower than that of their male counterparts. The complex set of variables influencing women's participation is evaluated according to the socialization and structural approaches, which offer different assumptions about the reasons for the trends in women's participation. In conclusion, I offer the main findings of my research, as well as suggesting possible areas still to be investigated within the field, as deduced from the questions arising out of my analysis in this project. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die betrokkenheid van vroue in beide konvensionele en onkonvensionele vorme van politieke deelname in Suid Afrika, was oor die laaste 10 jaar, en is steeds ervaar as problematies en beperk. Wat die probleem vererger, is die beperkte toegang tot informasie, die studie van, en literatuur oor, vroue se deelname in onkonvensionele vorme van politiek. Dit is in die strewe na die oorkoming van hierdie leemtes, dat hierdie werk aangepak word. Hierdie werk ondersoek vroue se deelname in onkonvensionele politiek tussen 1991 en 2001. Hierdie periode is spesifiek belangrik, omdat dit die demokratiese transisie na 1994 insluit, en om neigings in vroulike deelname voor en na 1994 te bestudeer. Dit maak dit moontlik om oor die invloed van die transisie op vroue se politieke deelname te spekuleer. Ek stel, en evalueer twee hoof hipoteses waarin ek; eerstens, verwag dat vroue se deelname in protes politiek sal verminder tussen 1991 en 2001, en tweedens, verwag ek om te vind dat vroue se vlakke van deelname in protes, deurentyd laer sal wees as die van mans. Die komplekse stel veranderlikes wat vroue se deelname beinvloed, word geevalueer in terme van die sosialisering- en strukturele benaderings, wat verskillende voorstelle oor die motivering van die geobserveerde neigings in vroue se deelname oplewer. Ten slotte, bied ek die hoof bevindinge van my navorsing aan, so wel as voorstelle ten opsigte van moontlike areas vir verder ondersoek binne die veld.

A Research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the Degree Masters in History of Arts at the University of Witwatersrand, 2017 / This research report has followed three periods in the history of the political struggle for freedom in South Africa, from the height of the Anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s to the present day by way of exploring three exhibitions of resistance posters as case studies. It is located in the realm of political and art history. Looking at the positioning of the resistance poster in South African art history, the intension is to highlight how these exhibitions have used display strategies to construct values reflected in the resistance poster. The three selected exhibitions are as follows: firstly, Thami Mnyele and Medu Art Ensemble Retrospective (2008), Second is the exhibition Images of Defiance: South African poster of the 1980’s (2004). And the third exhibition Interruptions: Posters from the Community Arts Project Archive (2014). / XL2018