Sociology

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    Shifting Coalitions within the Youth Climate Movement in the US
    (Cogitatio, 2021-04-28) Fisher, Dana R.; Nasrin, Sohana
    How has the youth climate movement in the US grown since the Climate Strikes began and in what ways did it change as it grew? This article takes advantage of a unique dataset that includes surveys from activists who organized the nationally coordinated climate strikes in the US that began with Fridays for Future in spring 2019. Building on the research on alliance building and strategic coalitions, this article analyzes how the patterns of participation changed over the period of the study. We employ social network analysis to map the affiliation networks among the organizers of these events to assess the coalitions of groups involved and the shifting organizational landscape. Our analysis does not provide evidence that groups spanned the boundaries across movements, nor does it show that identity plays a role in coalition building in this movement. Instead, by mapping out the coalition of organizations within this movement and how connections among them change over time, we see clear evidence that this youth-led movement was reoriented by adult-led organizations. Our article concludes by considering how these findings suggest the future trajectory of the youth climate movement and its role in a ‘new climate politics’ in America.
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    Rhetorical Analysis of Arguments Made in the Climate Change Debate: Argument Families and Social Network LInks as Potential Bases for Agreement
    (2004-11-11) Malone, Elizabeth L.; Kestnbaum, Meyer; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The issue of climate change brings together some of the most important sociological issues of the age, including global governance, the role of industrialization and capitalism in degrading the environment, the relationship between humans and non-human nature, and the inequality of nations. However, it is an open question whether societies and countries of the world can come to agreement about the meaning of climate change and actions (or no action) that should be taken to address it. To avoid privileging one or another of the issue's aspects, this study used a discursive and rhetorical approach to include all the arguments made in the debate on an equal footing. First, 100 documents that make arguments about climate change were analyzed to characterize the arguments made and to distinguish four rhetorical elements: the personal and organizational sources of authority for the rhetor, the type(s) of evidence used for the claims made, the worldview(s) expressed, and the actions proposed. This analysis provided the basis for categorizing the documents into "families," coherent arguments made about the climate change issue; and performing a social network analysis to discern linkages formed by the argument families and rhetorical elements that might be the basis for coming to agreement about climate change issues. The study found coherence within families as well as multiple links across families, indicating that rhetors in the climate change debate form a dense network of ties that could be used to build agreement.