Disinformation campaigns are a growing threat towards democracy and a phenomenon that is important to understand in order to guard against. One part of the literature around disinformation campaigns that is as of yet not widely studied is how they can be connected to social movements. Previous research on this connection have shown that disinformation campaigns will tend to support social movements indirectly through the spread of disinformation which both amplifies the claims of the movement and attracts more mobilizers, which can lead to for example lessened trust towards institutions and thus a successful disinformation campaign. This paper analyses the case of the mobilization against the Swedish Social Services in order to see if this connection between the disinformation campaign and the social movement was present in this case as well. The findings made shows that the connection was not that of an indirect connection as have been observed in previous studies but rather one of direct cooperation. Furthermore, this paper also explores what factors allowed for both a disinformation campaign and mobilization against the Swedish Social Services to manifest.

This dissertation is an examination of trust in vaccine science, with a focus on ideas about vaccination outside the scientific consensus. It is grounded in empirical research, including 35 interviews and a review of publicly available documents, books, and academic articles. Theoretically, it is informed by theories in the sociology of science, social movements, and the sociology of expertise. In substantive chapters, it investigates the origins of the modern ‘anti-vaccine’ movement, the spread of the movement's ideas in different sociocultural and political contexts, and the perspectives and personal experiences of those who are part of the movement. Overall, it contributes to a growing body of literature that aims to change the conversation around vaccine hesitancy from an information-deficit problem to an issue about trust in institutions. The dissertation is organized into three main papers. The first is an analysis of a specific historic episode, namely the 1998 MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine-autism controversy. I find that institutional incentive structures unintentionally circulated misinformation about the MMR vaccine by former medical doctor Andrew Wakefield and posit the role that academic reward structures have in fostering public trust. The second paper examines vaccine hesitancy with a social movement lens, specifically focusing on the strategies used by the anti-vaccine movement to organize and frame their message. I introduce the concept of an ‘anti-scientific intellectual movement’ to understand the increasing trend of social groups opposing science as a set of institutions. The third paper is a study of the lived experiences of participants who were interviewed in 2019 about their views on vaccination and how their individual experiences and meaning-making activities impacted their trust in vaccine science. I find strong distrust in scientific institutions, a desire for open dialogue and debate, and dissatisfaction with the ‘anti-vaccine’ label which participants felt erased the nuance in their perspectives. Altogether, this dissertation makes significant contributions to ongoing discussions about the public face of science and how to effectively engage with public audiences to build trust. / Dissertation / Candidate in Philosophy

This study compares repertoire and framing between two protests in the early Dutch environmental movement and two protests in the modern Dutch environmental movement. The aim of the study is to find differences and similarities between the two time periods the protests take place in. The four cases are studied using the comparative case study method, specifically doing a historical comparison. In each case, the theoretical concepts of repertoire and framing are analyzed. Each case is studied through a qualitative analysis of archival and secondary sources, including newspaper articles, publications and social media posts. Using the theoretical concepts of framing and repertoire, several similarities and differences are found between the four cases. All four cases use the frame of the threat to human health in their campaigns and aimed for a low threshold for people to join their campaigns. Frames differed more across campaigns with different topics than across campaigns from different time periods. In repertoire, cases differed across time periods more than within time periods. The contemporary cases focus on commitment by showing the willingness to bear great personal risk, whereas the historical cases focus on showcasing their worthiness through alliances with strategic actors. Overall, the comparative historical analysis employed in this research reveals that there are greater differences between time periods when it comes to repertoire than in framing, showing that repertoire is defined more by time period than framing for the chosen cases.

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The central problem that this research seeks to engage is the non-implementation of an Afrocentric movement for African American economic advancement. A wealth of research has explored external and internal factors that cause inequalities in wealth among African Americans and their White counterparts, but there has yet to be an adequate program that addresses African American poverty. The lack of an Afrocentric program has contributed to the formation of African American communities plagued by economic challenges. Social factors such as structural racism, poor educational institutions, generational transfer of poverty, urban removal etc. has had devastating effects on African Americans' opportunities of accumulating wealth. While wealth alone will not solve all issues that face African Americans, addressing economics realities from a social, political, and historical perspective will assist with the current movement for African American economic empowerment and contribute to the economic dimension of the struggle for African liberation. In focusing on economics, this research seeks to contribute to African liberation by providing a detailed Afrocentric historiographical perspective, an empirical analysis of current economic realities, and a model for economic liberation. / African American Studies

This project uses the archive at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international Quaker peace and social justice organization headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, in order to shed light on the globalization resistance labor of the Nationwide Women's Program (NWP) and its transnational networks. The NWP was an internal program at the AFSC, initiated by women staff and committee members who challenged the practices of gender discrimination within the organization and initiated external AFSC programs that served women's unique needs in peace and social justice initiatives. By focusing primarily on the serial inserts of the group's newsletter from 1978 to 1988, entitled Women and Global Corporations: Work, Roles, Resistance, this project draws attention to the dense networks of transnational communication and resistance against global economic restructuring during this time. It uses and challenges social movement scholarship by suggesting that the analytical frameworks of transnational advocacy networks and social movement mobilization more accurately capture the antiglobalization activity that took place several decades prior to when it is conventionally identified in 1999. The project highlights the NWP's social movement brokerage and the embodied social movement activities of the activists, scholars, and laborers in its orbit. These social movement activities included boycotts, letter-writing campaigns, labor organizing, and a plethora of other on-the-ground activities and discursive practices against global corporations and the institutions that supported them. An investigation into the sources of the NWP's knowledge production in brokering this movement reveals both Quaker and feminist influences that call into question the conventionally accepted binary between religion and secularity in the Western imaginary. The presence of Quaker and feminist influences on the NWP's understandings of globalization provides the opportunity for thinking through at least two possibilities: how a tacit Protestant secularism within the organization contributed to its own erasure, and how contemporary globalization narratives are infused with a Protestant secularism that insidiously frames globalization resistance as retrograde and fuels a universalizing (and therefore exclusionary) notion of progress and unsustainable growth. / Religion

The lack of success of the gun control movement and the success of the gun rights movement in the United States have prompted research into the root causes. Although the political infrastructure, organizational resources, and public interest prove to be important factors in a social movement's success, how each social movement frames their arguments is extremely important for proposing policy initiatives and garnering support. In order to understand how gun control and gun rights organizations frame their arguments this study does two things: (1) performs topic modeling on the six gun control organizations' and three gun rights organizations' press statements to see the frames that each social movement engages in, and (2) identifying these frames in the most popular gun control and gun rights organizations on Facebook to predict likes, comments, and shares. This study is able to identify the top frames in the gun control and gun rights social movements and see how followers of each of these movements engage with each of these frames on Facebook.

The purpose of this study is to explore the biography of a white, Southern Baptist-reared Clarence Jordan and his goals in the creation of Koinonia Farm. This thesis explicitly evaluates these motives through the examination of archival material—specifically Jordan’s sermons and speeches—that uncovers Jordan’s own words and testimony. This thesis answers the following questions: (1) What was Clarence Jordan’s aim in founding Koinonia Farm and continuing to implement it over time? (2) How did he go about methodically achieving his aim? And (3) How effectively were the objectives achieved as reflected in measurable outcomes—did Jordan’s sermons frame his position so as to make Koinonia Farm work over its lifetime? Additionally, this thesis challenges the methods of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm in the way they employ the agricultural and industrial educational models as a means of liberation and uplift for African Americans and poor whites in Sumter County, Georgia. / Master of Science