Thesis advisor: Vincent Cho / Leading for equity is a challenging endeavor. One leadership practice that fosters equitable learning environments is engaging in dialogue and reflection. When district leaders participate in dialogue and reflection, their discourse helps them derive meaning, and in turn, shapes their understanding of the critical and complex issues related to fostering equity. As part of a group qualitative case study about district leadership practices that foster equity in one diverse Massachusetts school district, the purpose of this individual study was to better understand how district leaders used framing during dialogue and reflection. More specifically it addressed how they used framing processes (Bedford and Snow, 2000) when engaging in equity talk. Utilizing inductive reasoning for data gathered by semi-structured interviews, observations, and document review, this study identified equity talk manifesting as one of three themes: diversity as an asset, decision-making processes, and use of data and feedback. Understanding how and when specific framing processes are used can empower district leaders to be more strategic in impacting stakeholder thinking and language and maintaining an equity focus. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This dissertation investigates the My Stealthy Freedom (MSF) movement, an online movement against mandatory hijab laws in Iran, building on two leading lead social movements' theories, political processes and framing processes theories. Study 1 explores the utility of a tactical approach for explaining the movement's pace of insurgency. I employ a conceptual repertoire focused upon the political process model's core concepts of tactical innovation and tactical adaptations, supplementing these older concepts with the more recently proposed concept of tactical freeze and a newly proposed concept of tactical hashtags that is of particular relevance to online movements. Study 2 focuses on extracting hidden patterns and emotional characteristics in the MSF movement by conducting a topic modeling study on the text appearing in the captions of the main account of the movement on Instagram. It was shown that the actions of Masih Alinejad, the founder of the movement, represented by her online activity and extracted by means of topic modeling, is directly affected by the sequence of important events happening in Iran concluding to a transformation of a social movement to political one. Study 3 models how social movements use social media in the formation of affective publics and apply this model to Instagram post data from the MSF movement. Thematic analysis applied to samples of posts and comments revealed six main themes, one of which, aggression, includes three subthemes related to verbal aggression and physical violence. As the level of aggression increased in Instagram videos, the level of aggression in the comments increased as well, and videos containing verbal aggression and physical violence had more likes and comments than did non-aggressive and non-violent videos. In the conclusion, I consider implications of the three studies for social movement framing research and research on emotions and social movements.

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The climate change skepticism has been becoming a more and more distinct and apparently increasing social phenomenon. To date, western scholars have described the different forms it can take and the factors supporting its increase. In the recent years, we've been observing some signs of a similar trend in the Czech Republic because the number of people who find the anthropogenic climate changes significant has been decreasing and the proportion of the "skeptic population" has been growing. Although in the first part of this paper I present an overview of data concerning the "public climate change skepticism" (available poll data), its primary focus is on the research of activities carried out by individuals and groups that relativize the importance of climate changes constantly, publically and in a more or less organized manner. In such case we can talk about a certain form of a countermovement against the environmentalism and the mainstream climatology. This paper draws mainly from a qualitative study conducted between 2011 and 2014 by means of semi-structured interviews with active Czech climate change skeptics. The goal of the study was to describe the strategies of climate change skeptics actions in the changing political and discursive environment, the forms of their organization and the...

I applied McAdam's political process model for social movement analysis to examine the level of collective resistance to high stakes testing in California, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Texas from 1985 to 2005. Data on protest occurrences in those states were gathered from online news reports, anti-testing organization websites, and electronic interviews from individuals associated with the anti-testing movement. Variables used in the analysis included each state's key educational accountability legislation, political affiliations of state political leaders, state political leaders' support of accountability issues, student ethnicity profiles, poverty indicators, dropout rates, and collective bargaining laws. I examined the relationship between those variables and protest development in terms of the political process model's three components: framing processes, mobilizing structures, and political opportunity. I concluded California and Massachusetts, with their strong networks of anti-testing organizations, showed more instances of protest than any other state. Slightly fewer protests occurred in New York. Texas showed few instances of anti-testing protests and there were no reports of protests in South Carolina. There was evidence of framing efforts from both proponents and opponents of high-stakes testing, with proponents' framing efforts tending to be more covert. I found that anti-testing protests were primarily initiated by middle-class and affluent groups of citizens, who demonstrated greater political access but whose major concerns differed by state. Evidence showed that although all five states have Republican governors, protests emerged more readily in the three states whose legislatures had a Democratic majority. I found that protest efforts were inhibited when protesters faced serious consequences as a result of their actions. In addition, state political leaders began to take part in the anti-testing protest movement once the state became subject to sanctions under the strict performance requirements imposed by No Child Left Behind. Overall, the political process model proved to be a highly efficient analytical tool in this context.

<p>This study focuses on the changing practices of South African residents’ associations and their relationship with political parties and local government from 1990 to 2006, with the aim to examine how associations in Cape Town respond when they are confronted with a new democratic institutional and political context.</p><p>Two empirical questions guide the analysis: How do residents’ associations perceive that the changing political context has affected them in their attempts to influence agenda-setting and decision-making? And how can we understand the process in which they decide to act, or not act, in response to important changes in their political environment? </p><p>Drawing on social movement theory, most importantly the notions of political opportunity structures and framing processes, an analysis is made of the most significant changes in Cape Town’s post-apartheid institutional and political context. The empirical findings – based on questionnaires, interviews and an in-depth study of the township of Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay – show that associations in socio-economically distinct areas have different perceptions of their prospects of affecting agenda-setting and decision-making. Because of the close links with political parties, many associations interpret the political and institutional changes as either threats or opportunities depending on which party controls the City Council. In predominantly white affluent areas associations generally seem to underestimate their chances of being influential, whereas those in black poor areas tend to overestimate their ability to influence decision-making when the ANC is in a government position. </p><p>The study contributes to the development of social movement theory by its systematic application of the framework of political opportunity structures in a local urban context outside the US and Western Europe. The pattern suggested by theory, that movements choose their action repertoire according to the rule “as moderate as possible, as radical as necessary”, is largely confirmed by the findings.</p>

This study focuses on the changing practices of South African residents’ associations and their relationship with political parties and local government from 1990 to 2006, with the aim to examine how associations in Cape Town respond when they are confronted with a new democratic institutional and political context. Two empirical questions guide the analysis: How do residents’ associations perceive that the changing political context has affected them in their attempts to influence agenda-setting and decision-making? And how can we understand the process in which they decide to act, or not act, in response to important changes in their political environment? Drawing on social movement theory, most importantly the notions of political opportunity structures and framing processes, an analysis is made of the most significant changes in Cape Town’s post-apartheid institutional and political context. The empirical findings – based on questionnaires, interviews and an in-depth study of the township of Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay – show that associations in socio-economically distinct areas have different perceptions of their prospects of affecting agenda-setting and decision-making. Because of the close links with political parties, many associations interpret the political and institutional changes as either threats or opportunities depending on which party controls the City Council. In predominantly white affluent areas associations generally seem to underestimate their chances of being influential, whereas those in black poor areas tend to overestimate their ability to influence decision-making when the ANC is in a government position. The study contributes to the development of social movement theory by its systematic application of the framework of political opportunity structures in a local urban context outside the US and Western Europe. The pattern suggested by theory, that movements choose their action repertoire according to the rule “as moderate as possible, as radical as necessary”, is largely confirmed by the findings.

En 2012, en pleine crise économique, le gouvernement autonome de la Catalogne convoque des élections anticipées et demande, pour la première fois depuis le retour de l’Espagne à la démocratie suivant la mort du dictateur Francisco Franco, une forte majorité afin de pouvoir mener la région vers la sécession. Plus ou moins en même temps, le groupe armé sécessionniste basque, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, annonce la fin de sa campagne meurtrière qu’elle mène depuis des décennies et qui fait plus de 800 victimes. Si l’on accusait depuis longtemps les Basques d’être plus séparatistes que les Catalans, ces nouveaux faits suggèrent un renversement des rôles de leurs mouvements sécessionnistes. En s’appuyant sur les littératures sur les mouvements sociaux et la sécession, l’objectif de cette étude est d’expliquer ce phénomène. Nous montrerons d’abord en quoi les structures économiques et institutionnelles encadrant les régions et leurs relations avec l’État central font en sorte que la crise économique espagnole (2008-2014) offre une structure d’opportunité politique pour la réussite du sécessionnisme catalan alors que cela n’a pas été le cas au Pays basque. Ensuite, nous démontrerons que le manque de synchronisme entre les processus basque et catalan de pacification des clivages de la violence politique joue un rôle déterminant sur la capacité de coopération entre nationalistes sur la question nationale durant la crise, ce qui affecte le potentiel de mobilisation sécessionniste. Enfin, nous verrons que grâce aux structures présentées tout au long de cet ouvrage, les cadres sécessionnistes mobilisés par les revendicateurs stratégiques et les fervents champions de la sécession sont plus crédibles et pertinents en Catalogne qu’au Pays basque, ce qui explique les niveaux opposés de résonance transversale du discours sécessionniste. / In 2012, in the midst of an economic crisis, the autonomous government of Catalonia called snap elections, seeking for the first time since Spain’s return to democracy following the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, a strong majority in order to lead the region towards secession. At roughly the same time, the Basque secessionist armed group, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, announced the end of its decades-long murderous campaign, which had claimed over 800 lives. If the Basques have long been accused of being more separatist than the Catalans, these new developments suggested a role reversal for both secessionist movements. By drawing from the literature on social movements and secession, the aim of this study is to explain this phenomenon. We will firstly show that the economic and institutional structures framing for the regions and their relations with the central state made it that the Spanish economic crisis (2008-2014) offered a political opportunity structure for the success of Catalan secessionism, whereas this was not the case in the Basque Country. Secondly, we will demonstrate that the lack of synchronicity between both regions’ processes of pacifying their political violence cleavages played a decisive role in determining the capacity for nationalists to cooperation on the national questions, thereby affecting the potential for secessionist mobilization. Finally, we will see that, due to the structures presented throughout this work, the secessionist frames used by the strategic claimants and the consistent champions of secession were more relevant and credible in Catalonia than in the Basque Country, which explains the opposite levels of transversal resonance of the secessionist discourse. / En 2012, en plena crisis económica, el gobierno autónomo de Cataluña convoca elecciones anticipadas y, por primera vez desde el restablecimiento de la democracia española tras la muerte del dictador Francisco Franco, exige una mayoría amplia para llevar a la región hacia la secesión. Más o menos al mismo tiempo, el grupo armado secesionista vasco, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, anuncia el fin de su campaña mortífera de décadas, que ha cobrado más de 800 víctimas. Si los vascos han sido acusados durante mucho tiempo de ser más separatistas que los catalanes, estos nuevos acontecimientos sugieren una inversión de roles de sus movimientos secesionistas. Apoyándonos en la literatura sobre los movimientos sociales y la secesión, el objetivo de este estudio es explicar este fenómeno. En primer lugar, mostraremos que las estructuras económicas e institucionales que enmarcan las regiones y sus relaciones con el Estado central aseguraron que la crisis económica española (2008-2014) proporcionara una estructura de oportunidad política para el éxito del secesionismo catalán, mientras que no fue el caso en el País Vasco. A continuación, demostraremos que la falta de sincronía entre los procesos vasco y catalán de pacificación de los clivajes de la violencia política juega un papel decisivo en determinar la capacidad de cooperación entre nacionalistas sobre la cuestión nacional durante la crisis, lo que afecta al potencial de movilización secesionista. Por último, veremos que, gracias a las estructuras presentadas a lo largo de esta encuesta, los marcos secesionistas movilizados por los reclamantes estratégicos y los fervientes defensores de la secesión han sido más creíbles y relevantes en Cataluña que en el País Vasco, lo que explica los niveles opuestos de resonancia transversal del discurso secesionista. / Al 2012, en plena crisi econòmica, el govern autònom de Catalunya convoca eleccions anticipades, demanant per primera vegada des del retorn d’Espanya a la democràcia després de la mort del dictador Francisco Franco, una majoria àmplia per dirigir la regió cap a la secessió. Més o menys alhora, el grup armat secessionista basc, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, anuncia la fi de la seva campanya mortífera de dècades, que va fer més de 800 víctimes. Si els bascos han estat acusats des de fa temps de ser més separatistes que els catalans, aquests esdeveniments suggereixen una reversió dels papers dels seus moviments secessionistes. Recolzant-nos en les literatures sobre els moviments socials i la secessió, l’objectiu d’aquest estudi és d’explicar aquest fenomen. Primer, mostrarem que les estructures econòmiques i institucionals que emmarquen les regions i les seves relacions amb l’Estat central van assegurar que la crisi econòmica espanyola (2008-2014) proporcionés una estructura d’oportunitat política per a l’èxit del secessionisme català, mentre que això no va ser el cas al País Basc. En segon lloc, demostrarem que la manca de sincronia entre els processos basc i català de pacificació dels clivatges de la violència política juga un paper decisiu en determinar la capacitat de col·laboració entre nacionalistes sobre la qüestió nacional durant la crisi, el que afecta el potencial de mobilització secessionista. Finalment, veurem que, gràcies a les estructures presentades al llarg d’aquest estudi, els marcs secessionistes mobilitzats pels reclamants estratègics i els fervents defensors de la secessió han estat més creïbles i rellevants a Catalunya que al País Basc, el que explica els nivells oposats de ressonància transversal del discurs secessionista.