Social movements are the basis for lasting political change. In order to translate movement ideas into legislation, however, movements must translate into political power.
Matthew Feinberg, Robb Willer, and Chloe Kovacheff recently wrote a paper titled “Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements” about what they call the activist’s dilemma.
In a nutshell, the dilemma is that we need to both raise awareness and garner support—and the extreme tactics we often use to gain the media coverage hurt us in terms of public support.
While movements tend to have different overall goals, two elements are common across movements.
- Movements seek to raise awareness about the problems they’re fighting to address.
- Activists seek to recruit as much support for their cause as possible.
Feinberg’s work examines a tension between these two goals. In advocating for causes, the authors write, many activists engage in extreme protest behaviors to gain media attention. They define extreme protest measures as “protest behaviors that are highly counter-normative, disruptive, or harmful to others, for example the use of inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, damaging property, and disrupting other citizens’ everyday activities.”
While these tactics are often effective in attracting media coverage and helping to draw attention to the issues, they may reduce popular support. The reason for this is that identification with the movement is a key motivator. If people identify with those in a movement and their concerns, they are much more likely to participate.
From prior research, here are the reasons people tend to join social movements:
- Perceived injustice
- Group efficacy
- Shared social identity
Activists often tend to focus on the first while ignoring the second and third. One study actually found that of these three factors, social identity was most important to collective action because it led to direct mobilization for the cause, and because it helped drive perceptions of injustice and efficacy.
To translate, if you’re an activist, you want people to identify with your movement. People typically align themselves with groups whose members are similar to them and who share common values and beliefs.
This study finds that extreme protest tactics often lead to people not identifying with the movement.
Opponents of social movements are going to try to paint progressive movements as extreme
The best recent example for this tactic is Milo Yiannopoulos’ appearance at the University of California-Berkeley.
The goal behind Milo is to try to say that liberals are intolerant. Talking to many many conservatives, they love Milo because he seems to point out a supposed hypocrisy among liberals—that we say we’re open to ideas but we’re really not.
To counter this, all you have to do is ask, “What ideas?”
What you want to do is get conservatives to openly express either 1) their racism, homophobia, and/or sexism (the only ideas Milo seems to have), or 2) to admit that there are not any ideas behind Milo. If you ask them this question, they’re in a no-win situation.
However, Milo provokes a gut response in us that tends to lead to protests. Unfortunately, at Berkeley, some members of the protest crowd turned violent. Fox News put this footage into heavy rotation and worked to characterize all movements as violent. It also made every other major network lend credence to the conservative claims that liberals are violent. Here’s a typical example in The American Conservative of how they’re using these extreme actions to undermine liberals.
For this reason, it’s no surprise that some people thought the violent actions (started by supposed masked Black Bloc members) were actually orchestrated to demonize liberals and other aspects of the progressive movement.
Since this tactic worked so well, we’re now seeing folks like Ann Coulter trying to duplicate the success at Berkeley.
What to do?
The most effective tactic against these trolls is to ignore them. As already mentioned, they have no ideas. If they came to Berkeley and no one showed up, they wouldn’t even make the news. Why? Because no one would be interested in showing them speaking to an empty audience. It’s only when they manage to provoke a response that they make the news.
It’s better to focus instead on events that support liberal causes. Look at how successful the Women’s March on Washington was, by comparison. Conservative outlets tried to demonize it but it didn’t work because it was such a positive event focused on bringing people together, rather than on some jackass conservative pundit.
And I already mentioned how to win the conversation with your conservative friends about people like Milo: just ask them what ideas people like Coulter and Milo are trying to express. If you keep asking, about the only thing they have is a white supremacy that smart conservatives won’t admit to, and not-so-smart ones will. Either way, you win.
How to raise awareness and gain public support
Feinberg et al write:
To succeed, social movements must raise awareness about their cause, typically through widespread media coverage. And, to help secure their place in the limited space of major news outlets, activists often engage in extreme protest behaviors. Yet, such behaviors alienate potential supporters, leading to less popular support for the movement. Moreover, this research indicates that activists do not realize this trade-off exists, believing rather that extreme behaviors not only assist in gaining attention, but also in garnering support. Together, then, these results may help explain why many activists and social movements develop negative reputations in the eyes of the general public.
The authors suggest that activists often utilize extreme behavior because they incorrectly believe these behaviors lead to both more attention and additional popular support, when the research shows they’re likely to lead to more attention and less support.
The question then is, how to raise awareness while increasing public support?
Here are a couple thoughts:
1. Develop and invest in media channels that get the word out without the need for extreme tactics.
2. Remember that the goal is not just to make the media. The goal is to make the media in a way that attracts public support. If you’re not attracting public support, you’re probably better off not trying to make the media.
3. Groups want to have members front and center that people can identify with. One of my favorite examples is George Takei. How great a spokesman is he for the LGBT movement? He’s well-known. He’s likable. He’s easy to identify with.
4. Look at who and what Fox News showcases as the “the left.” They like to hire people that they feel are the least identifiable. They loved Alan Colmes because they felt he represented that elite university professor. They love Al Sharpton because he represents the angry black guy. Do you really think they would ever hire anyone who would help a liberal cause? Do the opposite of Fox News.
5. Fight with humor. It’s very difficult to make humor look evil.
6. Look to movements that succeeded and see how they drew attention and garnered public support. One of my favorite examples is the Israeli Cottage Cheese Uprising (it was really about affordable housing but cottage cheese was the spark). In Israel, this is something everyone cares about. Right now in the U.S., health care and education are the issues that seem to be lighting a spark with the most people.
If there’s a particular tactic or example that you’ve found works well—or any that just really don’t—please post in the comments. I always enjoy learning and hearing from others.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (now available as an ebook).