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This volume of the Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change series, our 30th, begins by casting a spotlight on the institution that the RSMCC series exists within and primarily serves: higher education. Thus Section I includes two papers focused on the academy itself.

This study investigates core framing techniques utilized by two anti-illegal immigration social movement organizations, the Minuteman Project, Inc. and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, both volunteer civil border patrol groups operating along the U.S.–Mexican border. Theoretically, this paper is informed by Robert Benford and David Snow's work on collective action framing. Using a case study approach, document analysis is employed to explore how four types of framing techniques (diagnostic framing, prognostic framing, motivational action framing, and credibility framing) are implemented by each group via information presented on their websites. The findings of this investigation suggest that these groups implement each of the four framing techniques in question, with the bulk of their focus resting in the diagnostic frame. Through the examination of these groups via the framing perspective, it is also found that the groups emphasize the importance of place, that is, the U.S.–Mexican border itself. The case analyses thus further framing theory by highlighting the roles that “geographic and place framing” also play. The Minuteman Project, Inc. and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps are relatively new groups that have mobilized within the past few years. Sociologically, relatively few scholars have studied these particular groups within the larger anti-illegal immigration movement. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of how the groups utilize framing to construct their messages, missions, and goals to the public. Doing so contributes to an interesting and emerging type of civil border patrol movement and also adds to the body of work devoted to the importance of social movement framing.

Kathleen M. Blee is distinguished professor of Sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. She is completing a book manuscript on emerging social movement groups in Pittsburgh. She has also written extensively on women in U.S. racist movements, including Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, published in 1991 by the University of California Press and Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement, published in 2002 by the University of California Press. Earlier, she studied the historical origins of regional poverty and co-authored The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia with Dwight Billings, published in 2000 by Cambridge University Press.

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to demonstrate an understanding of:

The concept of brand purpose and ‘woke’ brand campaigns.

The theoretical underpinning of brand purpose.

Generation Z response to brand purpose and woke branding campaigns.

This paper examines the social and ideological significance of selfies as a manifestation of networked culture and individualism. The aim is to illustrate the meaning and affordances of selfies by investigating their potential for (post)feminist empowerment.

The analysis entails an exploration of the form, content, and context of (post)feminist selfies. This includes a review of popular expressions of selfie-empowerment as well as an in-depth ideological analysis of several revealing case studies.

As a result, this paper identifies a (dis)empowerment paradox marked by a divide between material and affective conceptions of empowerment. According to this paradox, self(ie)-expressions may feel empowering to the individual(s) controlling the camera while concurrently conforming to hegemonic norms – a trend which is particularly pertinent to many networked selfies shared via social media. Accordingly, the paper concludes by critiquing the discourse of selfie-empowerment and considering the significance of cultural context in shaping meaning and ideology.

By addressing these implications in light of broader shifts toward networked individualism and post-feminism, this paper critically examines the ideological significance of selfies and demonstrates a need to reconsider what sociological perspectives can contribute to the study of selfies within the context of networked cultures.

There is increasing interest in understanding negative consumer reactions to brands and the nature of negative brand perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the construct of brand hypocrisy from a consumer perspective and develop a scale to measure it.

A multiphase scale development process involving 559 consumers was conducted. Study 1 pertains to item generation and reduction phases. Study 2 reports on scale purification and validation through confirmatory factor analyses and model comparisons. Study 3 focuses on discriminant and predictive validity, while Study 4 further investigates predictive validity using real brands with differences in brand hypocrisy.

A 12-item scale measuring four dimensions of brand hypocrisy is developed: image hypocrisy (brand failing to put words into action), mission hypocrisy (brand exerting an unacknowledged negative impact on society or consumer well-being), message hypocrisy (brand conveying unrealistic or unattainable images) and social hypocrisy (brand supporting social responsibility initiatives for strategic purposes only). Results indicate that brand hypocrisy is distinguishable from similar constructs in the literature and that it is a significant predictor of negative word-of-mouth and brand distance.

This conceptualization provides managers with a detailed understanding of what constitutes a hypocritical brand in the eyes of consumers as well as insights about how to prevent consumer perceptions of brand hypocrisy.

Findings enrich the understanding of negative consumer inferences related to brands and provide a conceptualization of an understudied but increasingly relevant form of brand judgment.

THE RECENT DECLINE in issues has been noticed fairly generally over the country; many librarians have been considerably concerned about it, and your April comments in ‘Off the cuff’ are relevant. I have not felt concerned to a great degree, though previously I had enjoyed seeing constantly increased use of the city libraries service in my 20 years in Cambridge. The final figures for 1972/73 together with comparisons for the previous year are as follows: