Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The problem of this dissertation is psychological and sociological description and analysis of the appeals and activities of the John Birch Society as a movement of social protest of the radical right. The John Birch Society is one of the major organizations described in current journalistic treatments as radical right or as right-wing extremist. The Society came to public prominence in the spring of 1961 as awareness of its fairly widespread organizational accomplishments and of the more extreme opinions of its founder, Robert Welch, were brought to public attention by the press. The method included both library and field research. Library research, both before and after the field research, focused upon the provision of an adequate framework of psychological and sociological theory through which to perceive the setting, the leader, the organization and membership, and the ideology and activity of the John Birch Society. The primary data so perceived were those of many of the Birch Society publications, those provided by observers of local Birch Society conflicts in Gloucester, Little Rook, El Paso, Dallas, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Phoenix, and Wichita, and those provided by the participants on each side of these conflicts through interviews and, with many, through the administration of a questionnaire. Secondary data were provided by newspaper, newsmagazine, and personal correspondence descriptive of the leader, the organization, the membership, the ideology, and the local and national activities of the Birch Society. The conclusions of this dissertation are as follows: 1. The Birch Society functions as a fundamentalist reaction. 2. The top leadership of the Society is charismatic. 3. The organizational-leadership structure of the Society is an unstable mixture of both charismatic and rational-bureaucratic elements. 4. The stance of the Society as an aggressive sect is inherently unstable. 5. The activity and ideology of social protest represent the major appeal of the Society. 6. The conflict in which the Society engages is characteristically non-communal. 7. The ideology of the Society is substantively and formally logic-tight and, characteristically, those who affirm it are highly closed-minded. 8. Within our troubled setting, the ideology provides the social-psychological appeals of certainty, superiority, and self-righteousness and "justifies" aggression toward otherwise invulnerable objects of frustration. 9. As a fundamentalist reaction, the Society fails to serve its manifest function, none of its latent functions appear to be constructive, and some are latently dysfunctional even for its own existence. 10. The Society is well described as a movement of social protest of the radical right. These conclusions led the author to observe that the non-rational character of the Society tends to dominate and to obscure whatever fundwnental forces and issues may be in conflict. The implications of this observation, for the legitimated processes of the American democratic society, then led the author to the position that the only way to move conflicts with the Society into potentially constructive channels appears to be through insistence upon the norms of rational and communal conflict.

In a country that has been characterized by its high level of violence and historically strong repression of social movements and mobilizations, people demonstrated peacefully during twenty weeks in Guatemala City 2015. The mobilizations started after the revelation of a corruption network described as The Line, which involved both the Guatemalan Government and the Guatemalan Superintendence of Tax Administration. Each Saturday from April – August, Guatemalans gathered at the main square in the Capital City, to protest against corruption and to demand the resignation of President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti. After intensive demonstrations calling for the Vice-Presidents resignation, Baldetti resigned on May 8. The President resigned on September 2, four days before the general elections and both Baldetti and Pérez Molina were sentenced to prison because of their involvement in the corruption network. This essay aims to give answer to why people mobilized during several weeks and to create a greater understanding for why the mobilizations occurred. The Political Process Model has been used to analyze the character of the protests. This qualitative study is based on 16 semi-structured interviews conducted in Guatemala during the period of October – December 2015. A targeted selection and a snowball sampling method were used to identify persons to interview. The research showed that people identified the situation in Guatemala as a political crisis, which encouraged a broad participation in the protests. The traditional dynamic of challengers and members changed during the weeks of demonstrations. Since traditional polity members turned into challengers, the mobilizations had a high political leverage which made state led repression less likely. Therefore the demonstrations were interpreted as safe and consequently the participation increased. Traditional movements put their specific demands aside in order to be part of the collective demands against corruption. In other words, persons participated rather as individuals than as representatives from their movements.

Thesis (MPA.) --University of Limpopo, 2016 / Refer to document

During the years 2000-2002, the Republic of Argentina experienced one of the most, if not the most, devastating social/political/economic crisis ever seen. President Fernando de la Rua, elected in 1999, was forced to resign on December 20th, 2001, after several months of protests, public demonstrations, and a colossal economic recession. During the crisis, the media played a vital role, they told people not only what issues to think about but also what to think about them. This study analyzed the newspapers role during the crisis using the Agenda-Setting Theory as the research foundation.

For the purpose of probing into why there is an enormous cognitive bias amongst Mainland China citizens and Hong Kong citizens. This study used quantitative content analysis as the research tool to figure out how mainstream media outlets in Mainland China and Hong Kong frame Hong Kong protest events since the British sovereignty transfer in 1997. This paper selected three significant Hong Kong protest events as empirical cases, 1 July protest (2003), Occupy Central movement (2014), Anti-Extradition Bill movement (2019) to find out the transformation between two media outlets, Xinhua News and South China Morning Post. Framing theory, as the conceptual framework is applied to analyze all selected textual contents in this study. The result of this analysis presents two different versions of media report towards the same issues by two media outlets. And also, the research results also detect a subtle transformation of media coverage in three protest events. Eventually, the paper provides some thinking about media coverage and Hong Kong protest. Keywords: Hong Kong, media coverage, social protest, media, internal security