Interest, Ideology, and Claims‐Making Activity*

Abstract

Social constructionists have produced a rich theoretical and empirical literature on the rise and fall of public issues. By focusing exclusively on claims‐making behavior in a micro interactive context, social constructionists, in the tradition of Spector and Kitsuse, generally have rejected efforts to link claims‐making to antecedent variables. Thus they often treat claims‐making participants as activities, devoid of motives, meanings, and intentions. In this paper, ideology and interest are offered as antecedent variables to claims‐making and as the critical factors which determine why some claims are more marketable than others. Interest and ideology also are examined as both subjective and structural/cultural phenomena.

Dudes, Let’s Talk About Us: the Black “Community” Construction of Gun Violence in Toronto

“…The purposive sampling method was, however, complemented by snowball sampling technique. This technique has been used by other researchers in conducting similar studies (see, Gomez 1997;Bockman 1991).…”

Claimsmakers and Contexts in Early Constructions of Homelessness: A Comparison of New York City and Washington, D.C.

“…The first is the historical and cultural material that resonates with claimsmakers and from which they construct an image of a social problem (Snow and Benford 1988). The second is how these efforts at framing a social problem are interpreted by audiences exposed to the typification efforts of claimsmakers, leading some to align themselves with a particular interpretation (Bockman 1991; Snow and Benford 1992). Though in the constructionist view all meanings are “socially constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed” (Benford 1997: 410), the public is more likely to view some meanings as reasonable and as resonating with everyday experience (Benford and Snow 2000; Kubal 1998).…”