Films like An Inconvenient Truth, Super Size Me, and Blackfish can heighten attention to issues by disseminating important facts to a wide audience in ways that books and other media often cannot. But can they actually help social movements achieve change?

A new study in the American Sociological Review takes up this question by evaluating shifts in public opinion about fracking in response to Gasland, a documentary about the mining practice’s negative effects on nearby communities. The authors evaluate the film’s initial effects in a given community by measuring how the number of Google searches and Tweets about fracking changed after a showing and assessing whether Tweets about fracking were more likely to be negative in tone after a showing than before. They investigate screenings’ longer term effects by charting whether increased web searches and Twitter chatter amplified the likelihood that an anti-fracking demonstration would take place or a ban on fracking would be adopted nearby. They also explore the film’s national effects by evaluating web searches and Twitter chatter after the film was covered in mainstream national newspapers or nominated for awards.

Results suggest that Gasland did, indeed, increase public discussion about fracking, help sway public opinion, and spur mobilizations around the subject. After showings, discussion about fracking comprised more of both social media discourse (as measured by Twitter posts) and mass media discourse (as measured by newspaper articles) than otherwise. The tone of Tweets was also more negative, containing significantly more words like “contamination,” “pollution,” and “chemicals,” “ban,” and “moratorium.” Showings also increased the likelihood of anti-fracking demonstrations and the enactment of fracking bans in communities where the film was screened.

The findings shed light on how movements work in the age of social media. While the effects of screenings upon Twitter chatter were largest in the days immediately following the showing, the increase was usually noticeable as much as four months later. In addition, the communities which had the most Twitter activity were also the most likely to host demonstrations, suggesting that activists were able to capitalize on Twitter’s potential as an organizing tool.

In other words, documentary films and social media have a role to play in changing public opinion and enhancing social movements by helping activists disseminate and act upon information.

Often comic, romanticized images of swashbuckling European pirates suggest that we know what pirates are—or, rather, were. Today, baseball fans in Pittsburgh or children in Halloween costumes might cheer upon hearing the struggles of the British military in eradicating piracy in the 17th century, but what these struggles really tell us is that piracy is a social construction. Despite the British Royal Navy’s unquestioned status as the world’s most powerful military entity at the time, pirates successfully harassed British commercial shipping for much of the colonial period. In the face of such military might, why did piracy remain a major problem for so long?

In his American Journal of Sociology study, sociologist Matthew Norton sought to explain why, in approximately 1700, with little change in the Navy’s strength or priorities, British military interventions against pirates suddenly became successful. What changed to finally stem the tide of buccaneering?

Norton reiterates that because the British Navy successfully fought wars against Dutch, French, and Spanish colonial competitors at the same time as piracy plagued British commerce, the failure to stop piracy cannot be explained by a lack of military power. Instead, Norton points to the importance of cultural processes in classifying piracy as a legal problem, rather than a commercial one, and establishing a set of institutional methods for dealing with it. While piracy was certainly a problem before 1700, Norton shows that the British military and political authorities had difficulty defining exactly who suffered from piracy and who should bear the costs of fighting it. Laws passed during the 17th century failed to produce results, then, since little consensus around exactly why and for whom piracy was a problem meant state actors had little incentive to prioritize a harsh response.When piracy was a matter of private, commercial concern, it couldn’t be quelled. But legal changes in 1700 “reflected the new consensus that pirates were to be thought of as unambiguous enemies of the state and civilization” and finally calmed the waters of Northern Europe.

The violent military crackdown on piracy that began in the early 18th century “was only possible because earlier solutions that sought to adapt existing legal meanings and institutions failed.” When piracy was a matter of private, commercial concern, it couldn’t be quelled. But legal changes in 1700 “reflected the new consensus that pirates were to be thought of as unambiguous enemies of the state and civilization” and finally calmed the waters of Northern Europe.

 

Liberals like lattes, organic food, and independent films, we are told, while conservatives like hunting, trucks, and country music. Stereotypes like these have persisted long enough that to suggest that there might be some real foundations to them, but the substance of those foundations remains fuzzy.

“Culture wars” theories have gained traction among scholars and pundits alike, but even if liberals and conservatives have conflicting understandings of morality, what does that have to do with taste in music, coffee, or leisure activities?

In a new study in the American Journal of Sociology, Daniel Dellaposta, Yongren Shi, and Michael Macy look for answers. First, they seek to empirically validate these popular assumptions. They find that political ideology correlates with cultural preferences consistently over 28 years of survey data, showing that aesthetic tastes, leisure activities, and even belief in astrology map onto a fairly neat conservative-liberal ideological split. Yet such correlations fail to provide causes for division.

The cultural arguments to which many scholars turn can be easily molded to tell a particular story—for example, “If conservatives are more skeptical of astrology, the reason is that astrology is regarded as sacrilegious; if conservatives are less skeptical, the reason is that they feel less need for scientific proof.”

The authors argue, instead, that network effects hold the key. There’s nothing inherently “liberal” or “conservative” about liking particular kinds of food or music. Rather, liberals drink lattes because their friends do. Using a computer simulation, the authors show hypothetical sets of attitudes that are not correlated in the survey data can become highly correlated when network ties between people with similar ideas are introduced. This leads the authors to conclude “lifestyle preferences and political views become socially, spatially, and demographically clustered” through interactions between people.

Perhaps the idea that social networks and interactions reinforce cultural preferences will surprise few, but this study’s results suggest that at the heart of the current cultural and political alignment of the U.S. lies in a set of fundamentally arbitrary connections between ideology and taste. Clusters of people develop ideas about politics and taste together, pairing political and cultural preferences together in more or less random fashion. Over time and through network effects, some of these pairings become pervasive enough to gather attention and give rise to stereotypes. It may be that politics doesn’t divide American culture, then, but reflects pre-existing cultural divisions.

Many observers of American politics argue that since the mid 1980s, the increasing salience of so-called “social issues,” like abortion and same-sex marriage, has broken up coalitions of voters with common economic interests and has moved American politics to the right. They suggest moral issues have displaced class politics and that public opinion has grown more polarized as a result. Indeed, political elites package clearly defined positions on economic and social issues together into ideologies we call conservative and liberal.

If all that’s true, are people who are identify as socially liberal, economically conservative, or vice versa out of touch with mainstream politics? Or is the general public just less polarized than political leaders and the media? Moreover, what has party-line ideological packaging meant for electoral outcomes?

In the American Journal of Sociology, Delia Baldassarri and Amir Goldberg use 20 years of data (1984–2004) from the National Election Studies to show that many Americans have consistent and logical political ideas that don’t align with either major party’s ideological package. These voters, whom the authors call alternatives, are socially liberal and economically conservative (or vice versa), and their positions remain steady over time. Thus, as Democratic and Republican Party positions have become more polarized, alternatives’ views have grown more distinct from them. Alternatives have no obvious home in either party.

Though it’s intuitive, the study makes it clear that the ties between economic and social issues made by the left and the right, which many people see as normal or natural, represent just two among the many belief systems that Americans actually hold. Alternatives’ positions are logical, reasoned, and consistent—but unrepresented by either of the dominant ideologies. It is interesting, then, that alternatives usually vote Republican. The authors write that the most conservative among the alternatives’ views tend to hold sway when it comes to picking a party.

Two major findings emerge: 1) Beneath the ideologically divided rhetoric that is so prominent in American culture lies a public that is politically astute but unaligned. 2) The salience of moral issues is not the primary reason for Republicans’ electoral success. Instead, for as-yet unknown reasons, alternative voters follow their more conservative leanings at the ballot, whether economic or social.

Although public support for same-sex marriage has expanded, many Americans still oppose it. Religious beliefs and gender traditionalism are often cited as main reasons for the persistent opposition: many people interpret religious texts as condemning homosexual relationships, while others believe that traditional gender roles are central to the social fabric and that same-sex marriage undermines those roles. Yet many other contemporary behaviors, like divorce, transgress religious ideas and gender roles without generating nearly as much opposition. Why?

A new study by Andrew Whitehead in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion may help explain. Whitehead shows that being highly religious and preferring traditional gender roles are only associated with opposition to gay partnerships among those who see God as male. People who with no particular ideas about God’s gender are likely to support gay marriage, but those who view God as masculine and use male pronouns to refer to God are highly likely to oppose it. Other common views of God, such as seeing a creator as angry or as active in humans’ affairs, do not predict opposition to gay marriage. This finding indicates that religious belief does not determine opposition to gay marriage, but fits into a broader gendered understanding of social relationships. Same-sex marriage, for some, goes beyond the fulfillment of “proper” gender roles of men and women.

Religion matters, and so does gender traditionalism, but what’s really important is how religion and gender intersect to create culturally specific ways of understanding the world. For people who see God as masculine, opposing gay marriage is less an active political choice than a logical extension of deeply held beliefs in a gendered social reality.  

We often think of prayer as a practice that is private, insular, and personal. But new research demonstrates that prayer can also help to break down cultural barriers and create political synergy. In a recent article in the American Sociological Review, Ruth Braunstein, Richard Wood, and Brad Fulton show how racially and socioeconomically diverse interfaith groups—groups that focus on developing members’ abilities to identify community problems and hold leaders accountable through public actions—use prayer to build the kinds of collective identities that transcend differences.

When social justice organizations mobilize in political debates, they need to build bridges  across diverse constituencies and interests. The authors show that people from diverse racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds can channel group differences into energy for social justice through their common commitment to prayer. The authors recount, for instance, how “an Italian American priest called everyone to prayer: ‘if you are Jewish, stand for Adonai. If you are Muslim, stand for Allah. If you are Christian, like me, stand for Jesus.” In another setting, a Muslim leader said a prayer in which he alternated references to Allah and to God, in order to make the prayer accessible to all in attendance while also remaining true to his own faith. Such practices, the authors argue, become “opportunities for everyone to enact their shared commitment to being open-minded people,” cementing a collective sense of purpose.

The authors also find that the more diverse an interfaith group is, the more important prayer becomes for developing collective identities. Interfaith organizations that talk about race frequently, for instance, are twice as likely to use prayer as a bridging practice than groups for which race is not an issue. The effect is even stronger when for class and economics. Groups who talk a lot about economic inequality are three times more likely to build bridges with prayer than organizations that don’t focus on class. The more difficult and controversial the issues a group wants to address, the more important collective identities become, and the more useful prayer is in creating them.

The experiences of faith-based community organizations across the country suggests that diversity can be a benefit, but only if the cultural challenges of difference can be collectively embraced and directed. This study shows how prayer, when used to emphasize the social justice values that different faiths share, can create synergy between people of very different race, class, and faith backgrounds. One wonders what other cultural practices—religious or otherwise—might have similar effects.