Chapter 35 Further Reading

Foundational Theory

McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald. "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory." American Journal of Sociology 82.6 (1977): 1212–1241. The founding text of resource mobilization theory. Dense but essential for understanding the framework's core arguments.

Tarrow, Sidney. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2011. The comprehensive synthesis of political opportunity structure theory, resource mobilization, and contentious politics research. The standard graduate-level text in social movement studies.

Snow, David A., and Robert D. Benford. "Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization." International Social Movement Research 1.1 (1988): 197–217. The foundational text for framing theory in social movement research, developing the diagnostic-prognostic-motivational framing distinction.

McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge University Press, 2001. The synthesis text that integrates the major theoretical approaches into a unified framework for studying contentious politics.

Protest Data and Methodology

Rucht, Dieter, and Friedhelm Neidhardt. "Towards a 'Movement Society'? On the Possibilities of Institutionalizing Social Movements." Social Movement Studies 1.1 (2002): 7–30. Discusses the methodological challenges of protest event analysis and the biases in media-based coding.

Earl, Jennifer, Andrew Martin, John D. McCarthy, and Sarah A. Soule. "The Use of Newspaper Data in the Study of Collective Action." Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 65–80. The most comprehensive methodological review of newspaper-based PEA, identifying coverage biases and their consequences for analysis.

Chenoweth, Erica, and Jeremy Pressman. "This Is What We Learned by Counting the Women's Marches." Washington Post Monkey Cage, February 7, 2017. Accessible description of the Crowd Counting Consortium's methodology in action, available free online.

Salehyan, Idean, et al. "Social Conflict in Africa: A New Database." International Interactions 38.4 (2012): 503–511. Describes the ACLED methodology and its application to African conflict and protest data.

Social Media and Mobilization

Tufekci, Zeynep. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Yale University Press, 2017. Essential reading for understanding social media's role in contemporary movements. Develops the "network without power" paradox. Freely available at twitterandteargas.org.

Howard, Philip N., and Muzammil M. Hussain. "The Role of Digital Media." Journal of Communication 63.2 (2013): 297–320. Empirical analysis of social media's role in the Arab Spring, with careful attention to causation vs. correlation.

Gerbaudo, Paolo. Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism. Pluto Press, 2012. Ethnographic and analytical study of how Twitter and Facebook shaped movements in Egypt, Spain, and the US during 2010–2011.

Bail, Christopher. Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing. Princeton University Press, 2021. Research on social media, political identity, and the limits of algorithmic explanations for polarization.

Specific Movements and Cases

Kishi, Roudabeh, and Sam Jones. "Demonstrations and Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020." ACLED, 2020. Free online report analyzing ACLED data on summer 2020 protests and political violence.

Wasow, Omar. "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting." American Political Science Review 114.3 (2020): 638–659. Important research on protest and electoral outcomes, including the effects of violent vs. nonviolent protest on media agenda-setting and voting.

Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J. Stephan. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Columbia University Press, 2011. Quantitative analysis of 323 civil resistance campaigns showing nonviolent movements are significantly more likely to succeed than violent ones.

Phoenix, Davin L. The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2019. Research on racial coverage disparities in political news, highly relevant to understanding coverage bias in protest data.

Data Resources

Crowd Counting Consortium: sites.google.com/view/crowdcountingconsortium — US protest event data with downloadable files and transparent methodology. Free access.

ACLED: acleddata.com — Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. Free for academic users, registration required.

GDELT Project: gdeltproject.org — Global news event data. Free, real-time, but requires significant methodological handling.

Mass Mobilization Project: massmobilization.info — Anti-government protest data for autocracies, 1990–2019. Free download.

Global Protest Tracker (Carnegie Endowment): carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/protest-tracker — Tracks major protest waves globally.