Social Movement to Address Climate Change: Local Steps for Global ...

organizations and groups to the social networks of participants—and the relationships between them. Such analyses should enable us to explore specific elements and processes that characterize the institutional changes that accompany social movements. They also offer a window on impression-management strategies that both establishment and social-movement leaders use to maintain and/or gain legitimacy. As with rhetorical analysis, organizational analysis offers guidance for more effective advocacy among would-be agents of change.

Practices of Citizenship

Traditionally, political participation has been associated with activities like voting and, to a lesser extent, petition signing, letter writing, and political campaigning (Verba and Nie 1972). In the twenty-first century, the ways in which citizens can participate in governance has expanded to include participation in public forums, online deliberation, and new practices of political organizing, such as face-to-face meet-ups organized online (like SIU). At the same time, Lance Bennett (1998) and others have argued that people are moving away from expecting the government to solve problems and toward solving social problems through civic associations and lifestyle choices, a move he calls “lifestyle politics” since people are making political choices through lifestyle decisions such as group membership. Although some celebrate these changes as indicating that opportunities for citizens to act politically are increasingly open, others caution that they also contribute to powerful exclusionary forces (Peterson et al. 2006). Building a movement requires playful struggle with notions of how individuals can act as citizens in relation to the movement.

Our analysis of citizenship practices considers how SIU navigated the shoals of contemporary politics by using electronic media to create new roles for citizens and by providing safe venues where citizens could try out new identities. At the same time, by focusing on communication as a political act, we suggest ways advocates for change can more effectively marshal their resources by treating communication as a political act, as a practice that contributes directly to a successful movement.