Mass mobilization

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Mass mobilization (also known as social mobilization or popular mobilization) refers to mobilization of civilian population as part of contentious politics. Mass mobilization is defined as a process that engages and motivates a wide range of partners and allies at national and local levels to raise awareness of and demand for a particular development objective through face-to-face dialogue. Members of institutions, community networks, civic and religious groups and others work in a coordinated way to reach specific groups of people for dialogue with planned messages. In other words, social mobilization seeks to facilitate change through a range of players engaged in interrelated and complementary efforts. [1]

Contents

The process usually takes the form of large public gatherings such as mass meetings, marches, parades, processions and demonstrations. Those gatherings usually are part of a protest action. Mass mobilization is often used by grassroots-based social movements, including revolutionary movements, but can also become a tool of elites and the state itself.

In a study of over 200 violent revolutions and over 100 nonviolent campaigns, Erica Chenoweth has shown that civil disobedience is, by far, the most powerful way of affecting public policy. The study identified that an active participation of around 3.5% of a population will ensure serious political change. [2] [3] Activist and researcher Kyle R Matthews has questioned the applicability of these findings, which conern regime change, to other kinds of movements, such as Extinction Rebellion. [4]

Mass mobilization for social movements

Social movements are groups that protest against social or political issues. [5] Different social movements try to make the public and politicians aware of different social problems. For social movements it is important to solve collective action problems. When social movements protest for something in the interest of the whole society, it is easier for the individual to not protest. The individual will benefit the outcome, but will not risk anything by participating in the protest. This is also known as the free-rider problem. [6] Social movements must convince people to join the movement to solve this problem.

Examples

Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam war, supporters and opponents of the war mobilized for protests. Social movements against the war were groups of students or veterans. [7] These groups did not believe the war was justified and that the United States had to pull out the troops stationed there. To counter these protests, president Richard Nixon addressed the 'silent majority', [8] the people who did support the war, to organize counter protests supporting the war.

Yellow vests movement is a social movement originated in Paris. The protests started when president Emmanuel Macron announced a fuel tax increase. Protesters saw this as a tax on the working class, the people in the countryside who have to drive to work. [9] At first, the movement was successful. A lot of people joined and a majority of the population supported it. [10] After the first weeks, the movement fell apart and some factions became violent. The number of protesters and support of the population decreased. [11]

Government mass mobilization

Governments can promote mass mobilization to support the causes they promote. Many governments attempt to mobilize the population to participate in elections and other voting events. In particular, it is important for political parties in any country to be able to mobilize voters in order to gain support for their party, which affects voter turnout in general. [12]

Examples

Nazi Germany applied mass mobilization techniques to win support for their policies. The Nazi Party mobilized the population with mass meetings, parades, and other gatherings. These events appealed to the people's emotions. [13]

North Korea frequently employs mass mobilization to convince its people to publicly express loyalty around important events and holidays. Mobilization is also used to acquire a workforce for tasks such as construction, farm work, keeping public places clean, and urgent disaster relief. Mass mobilization is also used to acquire hard currency. Participating in mobilization campaigns is mandatory and failure to appear may result in penalties. However, for some, it is possible to bribe themselves out of the duty. [14]

Mass mobilization in social media

The effect of social media on mass mobilization can both be negative and positive. Cyberoptimists believe social media make protests easier to organize. Political ideas spread quickly on social media and everyone can participate in online political actions. Ruijgruk identified four mechanisms the internet helps mobilizing people in authoritarian regimes. [15]

Cyberpessimists point to the effect these online actions have. By liking or sharing a political post, someone might think they are politically active, but they are not really doing anything effective. This useless activism, or slacktivism does not contribute to the overall goal of the social movement. It also increases the collective action problem. Someone might think they already contributed to the cause, so they are less likely to go to a physical protest. [16]

Social media is also used by states in order to check society. Authoritarian states use social media to track and punish activists and political opponents. [17] There are several ways to do this. State led internet providers can use a monopoly position to provide information about internet behaviour to secret services. [18] These providers can also shut down the internet if the government faces mass mobilization, what happened in the Arab Spring.

To organise out of sight of authorities, people use encrypted online messaging services such as WhatsApp or Telegram. Virtual private networks may also be used.

Examples

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Arab Spring

The Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010. Rulers were forced from power in Tunisia, [19] Egypt, [20] Libya, [21] and Yemen; [22] civil uprisings erupted in Bahrain [23] and Syria; [24] major protests broke out in Algeria, [25] Iraq, [26] Jordan, [27] Kuwait, [28] Morocco, [29] and Oman; [30] with minor protests in Lebanon, [31] Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, [32] and Western Sahara. [33] Clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011, [34] as well as protests by Arab minority in Iranian Khuzestan, [35] were also inspired by the regional Arab Spring.

The protests shared techniques of mostly civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, rallies, as well as the use of social media to organise, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. [36]

Nonviolence vs violent tactics

According to Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow, the mechanism that produces violence in the declining phase of the collective action cycle is a result of the competition that arises among different sectors of the social movement. Together they formed a theory stating that as mass mobilisation winds down, political violence rises in magnitude and intensity. [37]

Examples

Italy

In his study of the wave of mass protests that took place in Italy between 1965 and 1975, Sidney Tarrow stated that "[i]n the final stages of the cycle, there was an increase in the deliberate use of violence against others. But this increase was a function of the decline of mass protest, not of its extension. Indeed, deliberate targeted violence did not become common until 1972-3, when all the other forms of collective action had declined." All of which leads him to forcefully conclude that "organized violence was the product of demobilization." [38] Donatella della Porta, in her comparative analysis of political violence and cycles of protest in Italy and Germany between 1960 and 1990, maintains that "when mass mobilization declined, the movements went back to more institutional forms of collective action, whereas small groups resorted to more organized forms of violence." [39]

USSR

Mark R. Beissinger, in his study on cycles of protest and nationalist violence in the Soviet Union between 1987 and 1992, also detects this pattern, but in this case violence takes the form of ethnic communal conflict rather than terrorism. As he says, "the rise of violence in the USSR in significant part was associated with the decline of nonviolent mobilization contesting interrepublican borders." [40]

Russia

During the 1870s, the "populists" or "nihilists", the proponents of a Russian variant of anarchism, organized the so-called "pilgrimages to the people", which involved small groups of members of the urban, petit bourgeois intelligentsia going into small villages to persuade peasants of the necessity of revolution. However, their efforts had little effect on the peasantry, and it was after this bitter experience that they made the momentous decision to adopt terrorist tactics. [41]

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political movement</span> Movement to obtain a political goal

A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some theories of political movements are the political opportunity theory, which states that political movements stem from mere circumstances, and the resource mobilization theory which states that political movements result from strategic organization and relevant resources. Political movements are also related to political parties in the sense that they both aim to make an impact on the government and that several political parties have emerged from initial political movements. While political parties are engaged with a multitude of issues, political movements tend to focus on only one major issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social movement</span> Loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular set of goals

A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations, or both. Social movements have been described as "organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites". They represent a method of social change from the bottom within nations. On the other hand, some social movements do not aim to make society more egalitarian, but to maintain or amplify existing power relationships. For example, scholars have described fascism as a social movement.

Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media activism</span> Form of activism using media for social or political movements

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Contentious politics is the use of disruptive techniques to make a political point, or to change government policy. Examples of such techniques are actions that disturb the normal activities of society such as demonstrations, general strike action, direct action, riot, terrorism, civil disobedience, and even revolution or insurrection. Social movements often engage in contentious politics. The concept distinguishes these forms of contention from the everyday acts of resistance explored by James C. Scott, interstate warfare, and forms of contention employed entirely within institutional settings, such as elections or sports. Historical sociologist Charles Tilly defines contentious politics as "interactions in which actors make claims bearing on someone else's interest, in which governments appear either as targets, initiators of claims, or third parties."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Tilly</span> American sociologist (1929–2008)

Charles Tilly was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history, sociology, and social science at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1984 before becoming the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social movement theory</span> Interdisciplinary social study

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Online social movements are organized efforts to push for a particular goal through the use of new communications and information technologies, such as the Internet. In many cases, these movements seek to counter the mainstream public, claiming there is a wrong that should be righted. Online social movements have focused on a broad range on social and political issues in countries all around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media's role in the Arab Spring</span> The role of social media in early 2010s Middle East/North Africa protests

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Internet activism in South Korea originated in 2002, when an Internet user named Angma proposed a candlelight vigil for two girls who were killed by a U.S. military vehicle in the Yangju highway incident. Angma's post circulated widely online, mobilizing ordinary people to demand SOFA reform and an apology from President George W. Bush with peaceful candlelight protests in Kwanghwamun. Since then, the Internet has been a space for open discussion of sociopolitical issues and grassroots activism in South Korea. Other examples of Internet activism in Korea are the 2008 U.S. beef protest, anti-Chosunilbo protests, and online feminist and LGBTQ movements with hashtags.

References

  1. ↑ "Communication for development". UNICEF.
  2. ↑ The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world, BBC by David Robson, 14 May 2019
  3. ↑ If 3.5% of the US Gets on Board With Climate Protesting, Change Will Happen, Vice.com, by Geoff Dembicki, 8 October 2019
  4. ↑ Matthews, Kyle R. (2021-11-29). "Social Movements and the (mis)use of Research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule". The Commons Social Change Library. Retrieved 2024-09-19.
  5. ↑ Glasberg, Davita Silfen. (2011). Political sociology: oppression, resistance, and the state. Shannon, Deric. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. ISBN   9781412980401. OCLC   648922054.
  6. ↑ Baumol, William J. (1952). Welfare economics and the theory of the state. Harvard University Press. OCLC   1010827827.
  7. ↑ Anderson, Terry (2007). "The War That Never Ends: Student Opposition to the Vietnam War". University of Kentucky.: 245–264.
  8. ↑ "Nixon's Silent Majority Speech". watergate.info. 3 November 1969.
  9. ↑ Baulaigue, Michel (2018). "Tensions à l'île de la Réunion: la puissance populaire des gilets jaunes". Sociétés. 141 (3): 133–139. doi: 10.3917/soc.141.0133 . ISSN   0765-3697.
  10. ↑ Canevarolo, Eva (2019). "Being 'Les gilets jaunes'". SSRN Working Paper Series. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3352613. ISSN   1556-5068. S2CID   204611795.
  11. ↑ "In France, Popular Support for Yellow Vests Cools Off". The Wall Street Journal.
  12. ↑ Winders, B. (1999). "The Roller Coaster of Class Conflict: Class Segments, Mass Mobilization, and Voter Turnout in the U.S., 1840–1996". Social Forces. 77 (3): 833–862. doi:10.2307/3005963. JSTOR   3005963.
  13. ↑ britannica.com link re-directs to 'Fascism' entry
  14. ↑ "A lifetime of mass mobilization in North Korea". NEW FOCUS International. August 16, 2015. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  15. ↑ shush, K. (2017). "From the web to the streets: internet and protests under authoritarian regimes". Democratization: 498–520.
  16. ↑ USAIDS. "@AIDS" (PDF).
  17. ↑ Rød, Espen Geelmuyden; Weidmann, Nils B (2015-02-13). "Empowering activists or autocrats? The Internet in authoritarian regimes". Journal of Peace Research. 52 (3): 338–351. doi:10.1177/0022343314555782. ISSN   0022-3433. S2CID   10921511.
  18. ↑ Boas, Taylor C.; Kalathil, Shanthi (2001-08-06). "The Internet and state control in authoritarian regimes: China, Cuba and the counterrevolution". First Monday. 6 (8). doi: 10.5210/fm.v6i8.876 .
  19. ↑ "Tunisia's Ben Ali flees amid unrest". Al Jazeera. 15 January 2011.
  20. ↑ Peterson, Scott (11 February 2011). "Egypt's revolution redefines what's possible in the Arab world". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  21. ↑ Spencer, Richard (23 February 2011). "Libya: civil war breaks out as Gaddafi mounts rearguard fight". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  22. ↑ Bakri, Nada; Goodman, J. David (28 January 2011). "Thousands in Yemen Protest Against the Government". The New York Times.
  23. ↑ "Protester killed in Bahrain "Day of Rage"". Reuters. 14 February 2011. Archived from the original on February 1, 2016.
  24. ↑ "'It Will Not Stop': Syrian Uprising Continues Despite Crackdown". Der Spiegel. 28 March 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  25. ↑ "Algeria protest draws thousands". CBC News. 12 February 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  26. ↑ McCrummen, Stephanie (25 February 2011). "13 killed in Iraq's 'Day of Rage' protests". The Washington Post. Baghdad. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  27. ↑ "Thousands protest in Jordan". Al Jazeera. 28 January 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  28. ↑ "Kuwaiti stateless protest for third day". Middle East Online. 20 February 2011. Archived from the original on 22 February 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  29. ↑ "Morocco King on holiday as people consider revolt". Afrol. 30 January 2011. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
  30. ↑ Vaidya, Sunil (27 February 2011). "One dead, dozen injured as Oman protest turns ugly". Gulf News. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  31. ↑ "Lebanon: Protests against Sectarian Political System". Reuters Africa. Reuters. 27 February 2011. Archived from the original on 24 November 2011. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
  32. ↑ "Man dies after setting himself on fire in Saudi Arabia". BBC News. 23 January 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  33. ↑ "New clashes in occupied Western Sahara". Afrol. 27 February 2011. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  34. ↑ Donnison, Jon (16 May 2011). "Palestinians emboldened by Arab Spring". BBC News. Ramallah . Retrieved 2012-02-27.
  35. ↑ Archived 2012-11-20 at the Wayback Machine
  36. ↑ "The Arab Uprising's Cascading Effects". Miller-mccune.com. 23 February 2011. Archived from the original on 27 February 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2011.
  37. ↑ Accounting for nationalist violence in affluent countries, doctoral thesis by Calle Robles, Luis de la. Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones. 2010 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original on 2011-11-15. Retrieved 2018-01-21.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  38. ↑ Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder. Protest and Politics in Italy 1965–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 306, author's italics.
  39. ↑ Donatella della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence and the State. A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 53, author's italics.
  40. ↑ Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 290.
  41. ↑ See Ronald Hingley, The Nihilists (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), Ch. 5;

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