Banaszak and Ondercin (2016)

Banaszak and Ondercin (2016) ‘Public Opinion as a Movement Outcome.’

Citation: Banaszak, Lee Ann and Ondercin, Heather L. (2016) ‘Public Opinion as a Movement Outcome: The Case of the U.S. Women’s Movement,’ Mobilization, 21:3, pp. 361-378.

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Banaszak and Ondercin (2016): Argue that most existing research either ignores public opinion or treats it as an alternative explanation to movement activism for policy changes; the question of how activism actually shapes public opinion has been neglected.

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Abstract: We demonstrate that an important outcome of social movements is public opinion change, particularly in the case of the U.S. women’s movement. We argue that contentious events associated with the women’s movement provide informational cues that prime the public. This process then leads to changes in attitudes regarding gender. We use quarterly time series data on contentious events of the U.S. women’s movement ranging from 1960 to 1992 and public opinion about gender attitudes in the United States to examine whether public opinion moves in response to social movement events. Using an error correction model, we demonstrate that social movement events have a significant effect on gender attitudes. Citizens adopt more liberal gender attitudes as the U.S. women’s movement increases its activity. These results suggest that social movement scholars should be paying more attention to public opinion when assessing the outcomes of social movements.

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Banaszak and Ondercin (2016): Social movements often aim at changing public opinion as an explicit goal; on other occasions, public opinion may change as a consequence of policy changes that themselves stem from activism, or as an unintended consequence of activism (i.e. backlash).

Banaszak and Ondercin (2016:363): “Social movements function similarly to political elites and opinion leaders who bring issues to the public forum, provide informational cues to the public, and/or frame issues in particular ways.”

Banaszak and Ondercin (2016:363): women’s movement protests draw public attention to an issue; indicate a degree of social dissatisfaction with the status quo; and cue the public to specific frames.