Individual inducements

Individual inducements
Prior contact with a movement member
Research shows the strongest inducement to activism is prior contact with a
movement member. For instance, new recruits to peace movements are
typically people who are already associated with members of peace groups.
Membership in many organizations
Another correlate of individual activism is the number of organizations a
person belongs to. Because of the difficulty of recruiting isolated individuals
most organizers do focus their attention on organizations.
Prior activism
People who have been previously involved in some form of collective action
in their past are more likely to be involved collective action in the future.
Having learned the role of activist, its easier to adopt the role again. The
longer one spends in the role of activist, the more integral it becomes to
one’s identity.
Emotional tension
People are more likely to act collectively when responding to strong
emotions. Community organizers typically try to identify an emotional issue
that will motivate people to participate. The Chinese students who drove the
democracy movement in China were spurred by a roller coaster of strong
emotions. It started with grief, and anger over the murder of Hu Yaobang,
the sympathetic general secretary of the Communist Party; continued with a
heroic hunger strike accompanied by vows of self-sacrifice; and ended with
fear and hopeful exhilaration brought on by the risky defiance of martial law,
and the blockading of entrances to the city.
Moving music
Music that is often central to a social movement also relies on emotion.
Music speaks to the emotions better than pictures or words. It stirs people
up. Historians frequently mention the importance of Tom Paine’s pamphlets
to the American Revolution, too often overlooking his reworking of popular
folk tunes. For more on the influence of music see Music and Social
Movements by Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison.