Matching Items (3)
Description
This study explores the online recruitment and mobilization of followers in a social movement. In this study, I identify and analyze how certain narratives were produced, distributed and recirculated online by a social movement organization that depicted players in the movement in ways that engaged followers in actions of advocacy and support. Also, I examine how particular narratives were taken up, negotiated, amplified, and distributed by online supporters who eventually become co-tellers of the narrative and ultimately advocates on behalf of the social movement. By examining a selection of media statements, open letters, protest speeches, blogs, videos and pictures, I show how online practices might contribute to inspiring and mobilizing action or responses from a large number of followers. Data include selected excerpts from an online social movement that began in Norway in 2015 and later gathered momentum and strength outside of Norway and Europe. This multi-modal analysis of digital practices demonstrates how collaboratively produced narratives (e.g., of suffering, sorrow, persecution or resilience) emerge and gain traction in the digital space, the relationship between the temporal and spatial dimensions of narrative, and the role of collective memory in building a sense of community and shared identity. Demonstrating the dialogic and interactional dimensions of meaning-making processes, this case study informs how we might theorize and understand the role of identity and narrative in the emergence and amplification of social movements.
ContributorsPaulesc, Julieta Cristina (Author) / Warriner, Doris S (Thesis advisor) / Matsuda, Aya (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The United States is attempting to find the most efficient ways of responding to the threat of terrorist recruitment within its borders. ISIS has effectively recruited individuals from around the world on a large scale and specifically targets citizens of Western countries with high-quality, cinematic, English-language recruitment material. In the following analysis, we propose an additional approach to understanding ISIS recruitment appeal by comparing the content of recruitment messaging from a militaristic (but value-oriented) organization that is familiar to the authors of this thesis (the United States Marine Corps) with the militaristic but value-oriented unfamiliar (ISIS). Through this analysis, we seek to understand ISIS recruitment not from a theological basis but from a communications framework: narrative analysis. We identified narratives in each organization's recruitment materials and, by comparing larger themes that appeared across materials, determined the overarching narrative arc for each organization (into which the many smaller individual narratives were tied). We found that the narratives of the organizations are similar and different in many ways, but most significantly, they articulate fundamentally different resolutions: ISIS is driving towards a defined narrative resolution (which results in the end of the modern world) while the USMC recruitment materials depict no concrete resolution, as the organizational arc is depicted as continuing throughout time. Our discussion of narrative trajectory and defined resolutions directly supports existing scholarly literature linking the need for cognitive closure with extremist views: providing certainty and assurance about the future to potential extremist recruits. As demonstrated in our analysis, the narratives produced by ISIS for the purpose of recruitment depict a definite and conclusive resolution to both individual and organizational narratives, removing ambiguity (of actions, of antagonists, and of resolutions) and the anxiety associated with chance from the lives of the potential recruits. We believe ISIS's removal of uncertainty and provided template for how individuals should conduct their lives is an important part of the appeal its recruitment material has for Western recruits. Our suggestions for real-world use of our findings apply the immediacy and defined resolution found in ISIS recruitment narratives to counter ISIS-recruitment strategies.
ContributorsParriott, Emily (Co-author) / Schaefers, Rachel (Co-author) / Ruston, Scott (Thesis director) / Carlson, John (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Much of the literature around coming out narratives is concerned with monosexual coming out experiences. While some recent literature has expanded to include discussions of non-monosexual experiences, there is a lack of research surrounding the coming out narratives of non-monosexual individuals specifically. This thesis aims to investigate such coming out narratives. The coming out narrative genre as a whole has been examined by several researchers across several years, highlighting a variety of monosexual coming out experiences. This project aims to utilize past research of coming out narratives to build a framework of common themes within the genre and employ this framework as a basis of comparison between monosexual and non-monosexual coming out narratives. Since the experiences of non-monosexual members of the queer community are not being looked at within the coming out narrative genre, it is crucial to highlight non-monosexual experiences in narrative research such as this. Data for this study comes from several publicly available online coming out narratives from YouTube, with the final total equaling 12 narratives. This study finds that there are distinct differences between the coming out narratives of monosexual and non-monosexual narratives and, as such, provides evidence of unique lived experiences for non-monosexual individuals when coming out.
ContributorsHill, Taylor (Author) / Prior, Matthew (Thesis advisor) / SturtzSreetharan, Cindi (Thesis advisor) / Himberg, Julia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022