Against all odds, in uncertain and violent times, Colombian women are mobilising for gender justice. They do so even when they face ongoing violence and personal threats from a variety of armed actors. The questions arise: how and why do women mobilise in contexts of high violence and insecurity? Despite a well-established tradition of studying women's social movements in times of conflict, and of high risk collective action more generally, there is a lacuna when it comes to analysing feminism as a mobilisation strategy. My research uses the case studies of the Liga de las Mujeres Desplazadas (League of Displaced Women, LMD), and AFROMUPAZ (Afro-Colombian Women for Peace) to illustrate the utility of an original framework - High Risk Feminism - to explain how and why women chose to act collectively, despite the real and threatened dangers that this implies. The thesis further looks to a similar setting (an invaded neighbourhood in Riohacha, La Guajira) where displaced women do not mobilise, in order to strengthen the parameters of the HRF framework. In all, it posits that we will see a specifically feminist type of mobilisation emerge when a leader is able to form a charismatic bond with participants by framing participation as 'worth it' in a domain of losses, despite the risks this incurs.

America's growing concern about fatness during the twentieth century developed in parallel with a society that made it increasingly harder to live a healthy lifestyle. Since the 1970s, sweeping political, economic, cultural, and familial changes have occurred in the United States. Many researchers argue that these changes have created an "obesogenic" environment that has contributed to the increased prevalence of overweight and obesity in America by favoring inactivity and the over consumption of highly-processed, calorie-dense foods and beverages. As a result, the field of public health has increasingly begun to recognize obesity as a "societal disease." In 2001, The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity categorized the number of overweight and obese Americans as reaching "nationwide epidemic proportions." Since that time, America has waged an all-out "war on obesity." Instead of a broader emphasis on health promotion, some public health researchers have suggested that this heightened focus on obesity is 1) guided by America's historically-rooted social disdain for fatness and 2) insufficient to improve the healthy lifestyles of Americans. In searching for a solution to the so-called "obesity epidemic," a growing number of researchers have begun to look to models of social change. After an introductory chapter describing the scope of the problem, this dissertation provides an historical analysis of two, relevant social change models. The first historical case study is an examination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's VERB social marketing campaign. The second study explores the model of social movements through the history of the aerobics "boom" of 1970s America. Based on these histories, this dissertation concludes by proposing a blended approach that harnesses the strengths of both models to organize and advance America's healthy living movement. / text

<p>This project investigates the network structure and political importance of the popular Appalachian culture and politics page @queerappalachia. Promising users a feed filled with “community.content.culture,” @queerappalachia serves as a digital hub for anyone interested in queer perspectives on Appalachian politics and culture, regardless of their geographic location. The page’s over 3,000 posts include memes about Appalachian culture; celebrations of queer rurality (#saturdaynightinthecountry, #ruralresistance); references to big trucks, Mountain Dew, and The Trailer Park Boys; posts about opioid addiction, needle exchanges, and #harmreduction; jokes about communism and anarchism; calls for establishing #mutualaid drives; and signal boosts which highlight ongoing activist efforts in the region, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline protests and the Kentucky miner’s strikes. The page’s recalcitrant and anti-establishment content has attracted a surprisingly large following of around 230,000. But what does this expansive online network mean for Appalachian and Southern queer people?</p> <p>Rural queer people often have limited access to offline political organizing due to their geographic location, but online political communities may be a way of increasing rural political engagement. However, the usefulness of social networking sites like Instagram for political organizing is contested. To better understand what @queerappalachia is and how it is being used, I have created a multidimensional network of the page, mapping how users interact with posts, hashtags, and each other. In particular, this study provides evidence for how the collective action concepts of “brokerage,” “diffusion,” “identification,” and “deliberation” are being organized and enacted within the @queerappalachia community. I have also conducted interviews with followers of @queerappalachia who have been identified as central by the network study. The interviews provide evidence of how people within the @queerappalachia network conceptualize their political identities in relation to the page and how users utilize the affordances of Instagram communities for political action. </p>

The presence of atheists within the Muslim world has begun to receive global attention after a number of cases in which atheist bloggers and writers in majority Muslim countries were killed for criticising Islam. The rise in number of Arab atheist Facebook groups has sparked conversation about the rise in number of atheists across the Arab world, and to what extent the use of social media platforms has facilitated this. This study examines 2 such Facebook groups and aims to explore the way in which social media platforms can be used to bring a geographically diverse group of people together to form a collective group identity, and to provoke societal change. The research was conducted using qualitative data, gathered using open ended interview and survey questions, alongside quantitative data which was gathered from closed survey questions and raw survey data in an attempt to understand how communication technology is used by these groups to form a collective identity among their members and to achieve shared objectives. The study lies within the frame of new social movement theory, with particular focus on the ever evolving role which online communications can play in developing aspects of a given society.The results showed that social media had given members from both groups the ability to share experiences, develop a collective identity, and utilise their new found visibility to provide the voices of atheists in the Arab world with an authority which they had been lacking. The study found that the freedom for atheists to unite online in large number was exposing closeted atheists as well as practising Muslims to opinions which would not have been as vocalised in the real world. The freedom for both parties to involve themselves in the group has reflected some of the difficulties faced in the real world, but has importantly opened up a dialogue and is working toward the acceptance of atheism within majority Muslim societies.

The Great Recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008 had a devastating impact on workers, leading to high levels of unemployment and underemployment, increased job insecurity and stagnant or declining wages. While the legitimation crisis of neoliberalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally, the immediate response by political parties across the spectrum was one of austerity measures and cuts to welfare. As the largest collective representatives of workers, trade unions are at the forefront of mobilisations attempting to challenge this consensus. Simultaneously, they are engaging in new activities to enhance public awareness and understanding of the crucial role that trade unions play in the labour market. Thus, the 21st century crisis is creating both challenges and opportunities. Each trade union movement’s response depends on the different forms of power they possess and choose to deploy, their strategies and allegiances, and the specific socio-economic and political context in which they are situated. Questions concerning what constitutes union power and the ways in which it is being exercised and revitalized therefore represent fascinating lines of enquiry to explore. To do so, however, requires a new perspective on trade union power that recognises the significance of the media which has been overlooked in industrial relations theory. Drawing on insights from industrial relations, the sociology of media and social movement studies, this thesis proposes the concept of communicative power to trace how trade unions produce and circulate discourse through the media (either union-owned or corporate) to a mass audience. Methodologically, it uses the tripartite approach which focuses our attention onto three key communication processes involved in trade union attempts to exercise communicative power: the production of union discourse, the circulation of union discourse, and the reception of union discourse. This is applied to four cases involving seven union organisations in the UK and Denmark over a five-year period 2010-2015. Data was gathered using 40 semi-structured interviews with union officials and activists, content analysis of newspapers, union media outlets and social media, and secondary survey data. In sum, this thesis argues that the media is, and always has been, central to how trade unions exercise and revitalize power in society. And within the context of accelerating digital capitalism, it looks set to becoming an increasingly important determinant of their future trajectory.