Cover not available
Part of
Doing Politics: Discursivity, performativity and mediation in political discourse
Edited by Michael Kranert and Geraldine Horan
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 80] 2018
► pp. 301–329

Chapter 13
Cross-talk in political discourse

Strategies for bridging issue movements on Democracy Now!

editor
This chapter examines the ways that speakers connect movements through language use as they build support for their cause, and position it in a broader understanding of the political terrain. Using a corpus of spoken word transcripts aired between 2003–2013 from US broadcast news programme Democracy Now!, we developed a dictionary of named issue movements using corpus linguistics techniques. Semantic network analysis of issue-movement co-mentions revealed that the civil rights movement occupied a central role in facilitating cross-movement talk, and a purposive sub-sample of those stories was examined using qualitative discourse analysis tools to understand how and why. Several language strategies are explored that participants used to make relational connections between issue movements, and I offer some suggestions on how to approach the mixed methods analysis of cross-issue movement talk as political discourse.
Keywords: social movements, corpus linguistics, network analysis, critical discourse studies, independent media, news, spoken word, grammar, issue movements, cross-talk
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Doing politics: Talking across issue movements
    • Issue movements
    • Cross-issue organising
    • Strategies for cross-issue talk
  • Case and methods
  • Analysis: Talking across issue movements on Democracy Now!
    • Issue movements
    • Issue movement networks
    • Cross-issue talk
    • Positioning issue movements in a multi-issue world
      • Movements start movements
      • Movements work together
      • We need to work together
    • What movements share
      • Same structural problem
      • Same tactical challenge
      • Same ethos or faith
    • People connect issues
    • Success can happen again
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.80.13tof
References (81)
References
Atton, Chris. 2002. Alternative Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
. 2003. “Reshaping Social Movement Media for a New Millennium.” Social Movement Studies 2 (1): 3–15.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul. 2006. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michal Krzyzanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak. 2008. “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse & Society 19 (3): 273–306.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Lance, and Alexandra Segerberg. 2013. The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, W. Lance, Kirsten Foot, and Michael Xenos. 2011. “Narratives and Network Organization: A Comparison of Fair Trade Systems in Two Nations.” Journal of Communication 61 (2): 219–245.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, W. Lance, and Amoshaun Toft. 2009. “Identity, Technology and Narratives: Transnational Activism and Social Networks.” In Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics, ed. by Andrew Chadwick, and Philip N. Howard, 246–260. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blee, Kathleen M., and Ashley Currier. 2006. “How Local Social Movement Groups handle a Presidential Election.” Qualitative Sociology 29 (3): 261–280.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Borgatti, Steve P., Martin G. Everett, and Linton C. Freeman. 2002. Ucinet for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis. Harvard, MA: Analytic Technologies.Google Scholar
Boyle, Michael P., Michael R. McCluskey, Narayan Devanathan, Susan E. Stein, and Douglas McLeod. 2004. “The Influence of Level of Deviance and Protest Type on Coverage of Social Protest in Wisconsin from 1960 to 1999.” Mass Communication and Society 7 (1): 43–60.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chesters, Graeme, and Ian Welsh. 2004. “Rebel Colors: ‘Framing’ in Global Social Movements.” The Sociological Review 52 (3): 314–335.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Contractor, Noshir S., and Peter R. Monge. 2002. “Managing Knowledge Networks.” Management Communication Quarterly 16 (2): 249–259.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
della Porta, Donatella, M. Andretta, L. Mosca, and H. Reiter. 2006. Globalization from Below: Transnational Activists and Protest Networks. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
DeLuca, Kevin M. 1999. Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Diani, Mario. 2003. “Networks and Social Movements: A Research Programme.” In Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, ed. by M. Diani, and D. McAdam, 299–319. Oxford: Oxford University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diani, Mario, and Doug McAdam (eds). 2003. Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action. ed. by M. Kaase, Comparative Politics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doerfel, Marya L. 1998. “What Constitutes Semantic Network Analysis? A Comparison of Research and Methodologies.” Connections 21: 16–26.Google Scholar
Downing, John. 1984. Radical Media: The Political Experience of Alternative Communication. Boston, MA: South End Press.Google Scholar
Downing, John, Tamara Villareal Ford, Genève Gil, and Laura Stein. 2000. Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Earl, Jennifer. “Issue Industries Online: Social Movements and their Online Political Ecologies.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Internet Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 7–10 October 2009.
Earl, Jennifer, and Katrina Kimport. 2011. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Edgerly, Louisa, Amoshaun Toft, and Mary Lynn Veden. 2011. “Social Movements, Political Goals, and the May 1 Marches: Communicating Protest in Polysemic Media Environments.” International Journal of Press/Politics 16 (3): 314–334.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eliasoph, Nina. 1988. “Routines and the making of Oppositional News.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (4): 313–334.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Entman, Robert M. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51–59.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1991. “Framing U.S. Coverage of International News: Contrasts in Narratives of the Kal and Iran Air Incidents.” Journal of Communication 41 (4): 6–27.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. 1991. Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
. 1992. “Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis within Discourse Analysis.” Discourse & Society 3 (2): 193–217.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foot, Kirsten. 2016. Collaborating against Human Trafficking: Cross-Sector Challenges and Practices. London: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Foot, Kirsten, Amoshaun Toft, and Nina Cesare. 2015. “Developments in Anti-Trafficking Efforts: 2008–2011.” Journal of Human Trafficking 1 (2): 136–155.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freeman, Linton C. 1977. “A Set of Measures of Centrality Based on Betweeness.” Sociometry 40: 35–40.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gitlin, Tod. 1980. The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Melvin F. 1995. Poor People’s Social Movement Organizations: The Goal Is to Win. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1997. “Chapter 1: The Work of Representation.” In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. by Stuart Hall, 13–74. London: Sage Publications & Open University.Google Scholar
Han, Hahrie. 2009. Moved to Action: Motivation, Participation & Inequality in American Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hertog, James K., and Douglas M. McLeod. 1995. “Anarchists Wreak Havoc in Downtown Minneapolis: A Multi-Level study of Media Coverage of Radical Protest.” Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs (151): 1–48.Google Scholar
Howley, Kevin. 2009. “Notes on a Theory of Community Radio.” In Understanding Community Media, ed. by Kevin Howley, 63–70. London: Sage.Google Scholar
(ed). 2009. Understanding Community Media. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Jip, Choi Jang. 2000. “Democratization, Civil Society, and the Civil Social Movement in Korea: The Significance of the Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Elections.” Korea Journal 40 (3): 26–57.Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York, NY: Simon & Shuster.Google Scholar
Lamb, Eleanor C. 2013. “Power and Resistance: New Methods for Analysis across Genres in Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse & Society 24 (3): 334–360.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Masel-Walters, Lynne. 1980. “To Hustle with the Rowdies: The Organization and Functions of the American Woman Suffrage Press.” The Journal of American Culture 3 (1): 167–183.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. 2008. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug, and W. Richard Scott. 2005. “Organizations and Movements.” In Social Movements and Organization Theory, ed. by Gerald F. Davis, Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott, and Mayer N. Zald. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald. 1973. The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.Google Scholar
. 1977. “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory.” The American Journal of Sociology 82 (6): 1212–1241.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McLeod, Douglas M. 1995. “Communicating Deviance: The Effects of Television News Coverage of Social Protest.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 39 (1): 4–20.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Melucci, Alberto. 1996. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mische, Ann. 2003. “Cross-Talk in Movements: Reconceiving the Culture-Network Link.” In Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, ed. by Mario Diani, and Doug McAdam, 258–280. Oxford: Oxford University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Partisan Publics: Communication and Contention across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Monge, Peter R., and Noshir S. Contractor. 2003. Theories of Communication Networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mottab, Giovanni, and Christian Badena. 2013. “Evolutionary Factor Analysis of the Dynamics of Frames: Introducing a Method for Analyzing High-Dimensional Semantic Data with Time-Changing Structure.” Communication Methods and Measures 7 (1): 48–82.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Donnell, Susan. 2001. “Analysing the Internet and the Public Sphere: The Case of Womenslink.” Javnost: The Public 8 (1): 39–57.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Susan D. 1991. “Meaning and Structure in Social Movements: Mapping the Network of National Canadian Women’s Organizations.” Canadian Journal of Political Science XXIV (4): 755–782.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Platon, Sara, and Mark Deuze. 2003. “Indymedia Journalism: A Radical way of Making, Selecting and Sharing News?” Journalism 4 (3): 336–355.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polletta, Francesca. 1998. “‘It Was Like a Fever …’ Narrative and Identity in Social Protest.” Social Problems 45 (2): 137–159.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ragin, Charles C. 1994. Constructing Social Research: The Unity and Diversity of Method. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.Google Scholar
Rauch, Jennifer, Sunitha Chitrapu, Susan Tyler Eastman, John C. Evans, Christopher Paine, and Peter Mwesige. 2007. “From Seattle 1999 to New York 2004: A Longitudinal Analysis of Journalistic Framing of the Movement for Democratic Globalization.” Social Movement Studies 6 (2): 131–145.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reinsborough, Patrick, and Doyle Canning. 2008. Re:Imagining Change: An Introduction to Story-Based Strategy. Oakland, CA: PM Press.Google Scholar
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Salama, Amir H. Y. 2011. “Ideological Collocation and the Recontexualization of Wahhabi-Saudi Islam Post-9/11: A Synergy of Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse & Society 22 (3): 315–342.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto. 1999. “‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse & Society 10 (2): 191–224.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saunders, Clare. 2007. “Using Social Network Analysis to Explore Social Movements: A Relational Approach.” Social Movement Studies 6 (3): 227–243.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schultz, Friederike, Jan Kleinnijenhuis, Dirk Oegema, Sonja Utz, and Wouter van Atteveldt. 2012. “Strategic Framing in the BP Crisis: A Semantic Network Analysis of Associative Frames.” Public Relations Review 38 (1): 97–107.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sewell, William H. 1994. “Ideologies and Social Revolution: Reflections on the French Case.” In Social Revolutions in the Modern World, ed. by Theda Skocpol, 169–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Colocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Jackie, John D. McCarthy, Clark McPhail, and Boguslaw Augustyn. 2001. “From Protest to Agenda Building: Descriptive Bias in Media Coverage of Protest Events in Washington D.C.” Social Forces 79 (4): 1397–1423.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snow, David A., and Robert D. Benford. 1988. “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization.” In International Social Movement Research Vol 1, ed. by Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Torrow, 197–217. Greenwich: JAI Press Inc.Google Scholar
Snow, David A., E. Burke Rochford Jr., Steven K. Warden, and Robert D. Benford. 1986. “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.” American Sociological Review 51: 464–481.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stavitsky, Alan G., and Timothy W. Gleason. 1994. “Alternative Things Considered: A Comparison of National Public Radio and Pacifica Radio News Coverage.” Journalism Quarterly 71 (4): 775–786.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Streitmatter, Roger. 1995. “Creating a Venue for The ‘Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’: Origins of the Gay and Lesbian Press.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 72 (2): 436–447.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael. 2001. Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Thurlow, Crispin, and Adam Jaworski. 2006. “The Alchemy of the Upwardly Mobile: Symbolic Capital and the Stylization of Elites in Frequent-Flyer Programmes.” Discourse & Society 17 (1): 99–135.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toft, Amoshaun. 2014. “Contesting the Deviant Other: Discursive Strategies for the Production of Homeless Subjectivities.” Discourse & Society 25 (6): 783–809.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Valocchi, Stephen. 2007. “Ideology, Organization, and Biography: The Cultural Construction of Identity Talk among Progressive Activists in Hartford, Connecticut.” In Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 27, ed. by Patrick G. Coy, 189–217. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. 1993. “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse & Society 4 (2): 249–283.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Doorn, Marjoka, Jacomijne Prins, and Saskia Welshen. 2013. “‘Protest against Whom?’: The Role of Collective Meaning Making in Politicization.” In The Future of Social Movement Research: Dynamics, Mechanisms, and Processes, ed. by Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Conny Roggeband, and Bert Klandermans, 59–78. Mineapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo. 2007. “Legitimation in Discourse and Communication.” Discourse & Communication 1 (1): 91–112.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wasserman, Stanley, and Katherine Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar