Question

Opinion on social movements ​

Answer 1

Explanation:

Although public opinion would seem to be a crucial factor for achieving a large‐scale mobilization and impacting politics and public policy, it has not yet received much attention in the social movement literature. There are probably a number of reasons for this lack of attention: (1) data on public opinion suitable for social movement scholars are not usually covered in publicly available opinion surveys and to gather them is costly; (2) requirements for data gathering would be even more demanding than for standard surveys because more developed research designs going beyond one survey at one time, such as public opinion across geographical units or longitudinal data, are needed; (3) public opinion is frequently studied by political science, while social movements are a primary focus of sociology. The following will first define what public opinion is, and how social movements can influence it, and then present two ways in which public opinion can play a significant role for social movement activism.