The Ingredients of Micro-mobilization

The Ingredients of Micro-mobilization
Kindling in small groups
The basic building block of social movements is the small informal group
connected to a loose network. Sometimes this "micro-mobilization context"
is a group of friends, sometimes a group of coworkers, sometimes a
subgroup within a larger group like a church or a union. A well-known
example is the four Greensboro A&T students who precipitated the 60’s
black sit in movement after “bull-sessions” in one another’s dorm rooms.
Margaret Mead was quite right: “Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only
thing that ever has.”
Familiar members
Micro-mobilization contexts act as the staging ground for movements. Three
resources affect the emergence of a movement: members, leaders, and an
existing communications network. Research shows that new members
appear along established lines of interaction. New members tend to know
people who are already members. The more a person is integrated into an
activist community, the more readily he or she will be willing to take part in
protest activities.
A co-optable communications network
The pattern, speed and spread of a movement depends on an existing cooptable
communications network. The women’s liberation movement was
able to make rapid progress in the 1960’s (when it had previously failed to do
so) because of the prior arrival of just such a network. Overall, the greater the
number and diversity of people actively participating in an network the more
likely it will support a mobilization effort.
The network may be informal and invisible, like those described in detail
in Emanuel Rosen’s book, The Anatomy of Buzz. Rosen sees networks as
useful for flogging products; activists see them as useful for spreading ideas.
Activists could learn something from books on social networks, viral
marketing, and the spread of epidemics. Because social movements seem to
spread like other innovations, activists might also learn something from the
literature on technical and cultural diffusion, and the role of early adopters