Over at my Networked Social Movements: Media & Mobilization class, we've been discussing different approaches to understanding social movement outcomes. Thinking more carefully about movement outcomes helps us get beyond simplistic debates about the role of particular tools or tactics. In my own work, drawing from social movement theory, I find Suzanne Stagennborg's framework of mobilization, policy, and cultural outcomes useful.

Mobilization outcomes have to do with the scale of participation in a specific action - how many people turned out to your event, or took the action you requested.

Policy outcomes seem self explanatory - was there a concrete policy that the movement was able to pass (or block)? However, it gets complex when you start to look at how small shifts in policy language can come as the result of movement activity, even when it's not an entire bill.

Gabi has done a nice job summarizing last week's blog posts from the networked social movements seminar, which this week was focused on collective identity processes. Cross posting for the civic media crowd (or read the original post here):

The People's Mic: Dancing Between Collective and Personal Identities? - Amy

This is a crosspost from the Networked Social Movements course blog, where Vic has written an excellent summary of student posts about resource mobilization theory:

My name is Vic and the following is a brief overview of the posts for the week of Feb 20th: (Classical Theories), Resource Mobilization, Political Process. The most salient themes emerged loud and clear with many of the blog posts exploring both media exposure and the perception of social movements as "dumb angry mobs."

Resource Mobilization Theory - Huansun

Live notes from Otto Santa Ana's talk "Contemporary Network Television News Reporting About Latinos: Successes, Failures, and a Range of Proposals to Correct Its Limitations." All errors by natematias and schock.

Event link: http://cms.mit.edu/events/talks.php#020812
Live notes link: http://brownbag.me:9001/p/otto

Before Fox News: Right-Wing Broadcasting, Cold War America, and the Conservative Movement
Heather Hendershot, Queens College, CUNY
http://cms.mit.edu/events/specialevents.php#122011

Liveblogged by @schock - apologies for errors!

Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work
Anne Balsamo, University of Southern California

In her transmedia project, Designing Culture, Anne Balsamo investigates the way in which culture influences the process of technological innovation. Drawing on her experiences working as part of collaborative research-design teams that combine art/science/design/engineering, she will describe her new research on public interactives and the infrastructures of public intimacy. Anne Balsamo's work focuses on the relationship between the culture and technology. This focus informs her practice as a scholar, researcher, new media designer and entrepreneur. She is currently a Professor of Interactive Media in the School of Cinematic Arts, and of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. From 2004-2007, she served as the Director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy. http://designingculture.org

--

Liveblogged notes from Philip Napoli's talk at cms.mit.edu All errors by @schock!

John Hartley's talk @CMS, liveblogged. Errors, as usual, by @schock.

The following was liveblogged from Ian Bogost's talk for CMS. All errors belong to @schock!