Start Small, Build Big: Negotiating Opportunities in Media Markets

Abstract

We track the strategic choices of Rhode Island Coalition against Domestic Violence (RICADV), a statewide collective actor working in one media market to expand opportunities to promote its mission. We reconstruct an organizational life history describing how RICADV built its communications capacity and deepened internal and external relations, thereby increasing media standing with Rhode Island journalists. To measure growth in media standing quantitatively, we analyze print coverage of three comparable clusters of domestic violence murders occurring in Rhode Island between 1996 and 2002. Over this interval, RICADV rose from invisibility to become Rhode Island reporters' foremost source for background information on domestic-violence murders. Also, the use of language identifying these murders as domestic violence increased sixteen-fold. Stressing dialogic and relational approaches, we conclude that despite restricted access to corporatized media markets, intentional collective actors can negotiate and expand media opportunities by strategically selecting mission-relevant media projects that match their existing resources and networks.

Recipes for Attention: Policy Reforms, Crises, Organizational Characteristics, and the Newspaper Coverage of the LGBT Movement, 1969–2009

“…Also, although we talk about the strategies and actions of organizations, such as advocating policies or protesting, our indicators address only whether they do these things, not how much, when, or how exactly they do them. More detailed research is needed to address whether and how movement organizations' media (Ryan, Anastario, and Jeffreys 2005) and other strategies of collective action matter in gaining attention in which larger contexts. Moreover, we examine only the overall coverage of organizations and do not address the valence of this coverage or how substantive the coverage might be (Alwood 1996;Barakso and Schaffner 2006).…”

Framing economic inequality in the news in Canada and the United States

“…Past work has tended to find that news routines, journalistic norms and conventions, and the efforts of other powerful actors shape the framing of issues more strongly than do the strategic frames put forward by social movement organizations (Benford and Snow, 2000, p:626;Entman and Rojecki, 1993). However, some work suggests that social movement actors can, under certain conditions, influence news frames (e.g., Ryan et al, 2005). The Occupy movement included powerful messages about economic inequality-specifically about the role of the corporate sector causing inequality and about the harmfulness of inequality-that could be reflected in news framing of that issue.…”

“…News frames are subject to a range of potential influences. For example, past research has examined the influence of the political orientation of news producers (Kim et al, 2010), nationally specific cultural repertoires (Benson and Saguy, 2005), the work of social movements (Ryan et al, 2005), and underlying social structural change (Misra et al, 2003). While evidence for each of these determinants exists, in order to increase our understanding of how news frames emerge, we need to study potential determinants relative to one another.…”

Social Movements, Protest and Mainstream Media

“…The cycle of large scale protests which has accompanied international summits demonstrates that these meetings have been perceived and acted upon as opportunities for protests. However, given these protests take place on the 'public screen' (DeLuca and Peeples 2002), some research has discussed the media as a component of political opportunity (Gamson and Meyer 1996;McCurdy 2009;Rohlinger 2006;Ryan et al 2005). Gamson and Meyer (1996) highlight two media variables of political opportunity.…”

“…Complementing, and often behind such the media friendly events, social movements engage strategically with journalists in an effort to increase the quantity and quality of mainstream media coverage. Ryan et al (2005), through a case study of the Rhode Island Coalition against Domestic Violence, document a number of these strategies which include the cultivation of long term relationships with reporters to establish the collation as a news source, the development of a media response team to rapidly reply to media enquiries, the provision of media training to increase message impact and efforts to capitalize on the media's coverage of events which link to their topic of interest. Social movements may also seek to improve their visibility through monitoring news coverage and responding to inaccurate stories by either contacting the journalist directly or the editor as well as establishing a database of journalists to increase the distribution of messages and press releases (McCurdy 2009(McCurdy , 2010.…”