A Sociological Perspective on Social Movements

Scholars including sociologists who study social movements have classified different types of social movements that have varying goals and approaches, have theorized about the development and success of social movements, and have identified several phases of the life cycle of social movements. On this page we review some of this literature. 

  

Types of Social Movements

One of the most common and important types of social movements is the reform movement, which seeks limited, though still significant, changes in some aspect of a nation’s political, economic, or social systems. It does not try to overthrow the existing government but rather works to improve conditions within the existing regime. Some of the most important social movements in US history have been reform movements, including most feminist movements, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, some queer liberation movements, and the environmental movement. For instance, in the first wave of feminism, advocates sought gender equality within existing social institutions. They asked for participation in the institutions of the state (being able to vote) and education (being able to attend college). They did not wish to dramatically reinvent these institutions or overthrow them, but sought smaller reforms within them.

A revolutionary movement goes further than a reform movement, seeking to overthrow existing social institutions or systems and to bring about new ones and even a new way of life. Revolutionary movements have been common throughout history. The abolitionist ideals at the heart of BLM organizing principles can be considered revolutionary in that they challenge the very premise of policing as an effective or humane response to social problems. The Black Lives Matter website invites visitors to “join the movement for Freedom, Liberation and Justice” (Black Lives Matter 2023). Building on the work of social theorists like Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Michelle Alexander, BLM organizers articulate an abolitionist vision that does not seek to reform policing but to replace the current criminal justice system with a system of transformative justice and community care. To learn more about what organizers mean by “abolish the police,” watch the 3-part series, Imagining Abolition.

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Abolition is about presence – the presence of life-giving systems that allow people to thrive and be well, that prevent harm and better equip communities to address harm when it occurs.

– Ruth Wilson Gilmore

...to have a world with no hunger; that’s the abolitionists’ goal.

– Richie Reseda, Abolitionist, Producer, Organizer

Another type of political movement is a reactionary movement, so named because it tries to block social change or to reverse already achieved social change. #BlueLivesMatter emerged in 2016 as a call to support and respect police and to defend the criminal justice institution and traditions of police. Supporters assert that police officers are doing dangerous and misunderstood jobs that deserve respect. They claim that BLM organizing has made police work more dangerous and that the police have been victims of deliberate misinformation. This can be considered a reactionary movement as the goal is to block the social changes and maintain the status quo.

In general, a reform movement attempts to work within existing systems and institutions to address social problems, a revolutionary movement attempts to dismantle or fundamentally alter current systems and institutions to address social problems, and a reactionary movement attempts to halt or reverse recent social change of social movements that address social problems. Some movements may fall into more than one classification, such as how 'second wave' feminism involved both reform and revolutionary qualities, or how the recent backlash to women's rights is both reactionary and takes a reform approach. In addition to these classifications, scholars have theorized about social movements. 

  

Theory on Social Movements

Sociologists and other social scientists have proposed theories to frame and explain social movements. We explore a few examples of this theorizing below.

New Social Movement Theory

New social movement theory, a development of European social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s, attempts to explain the proliferation of postindustrial and postmodern movements. Rather than being one specific theory, it is more of a perspective that revolves around understanding movements as they relate to social class, politics, identity, culture, and social change. The Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells (pictured below) looks at how technology is transforming social movements.

Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells connects the power of the internet with the efficacy of social movements to explain their effectiveness in new ways.

“Photo of Manuel Castells” by Jorge Gonzalez is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

He argues that because the internet allows communication between people, often outside a government’s control, social movements can be formed more rapidly and sometimes more effectively today. He also believes that people act when their fear turns into anger about the oppression they experience and when they are motivated by hope. He writes:

"…the second condition for individual experience to link up and form a movement is the existence of a communication process that propagates the events and the emotions attached to it. The faster and more interactive the process of communication is, the more likely the formation of a process of collective action becomes, rooted in outrage, propelled by enthusiasm and motivated by hope" (Castells 2015).

We see this combination of technology and passion present with BLM-inspired organizing, and also with interrelated social movements for racial, gender, and disability justice, like ecofeminism, which focuses on patriarchal society as a source of environmental problems.

Resource Mobilization Theory

White American sociologists McCarthy and Zald (1977) proposed a new theory about social movements that emphasizes resources in the success of social movements. In resource mobilization theory, they say that social movements are successful when they can gather people and use their economic, political, and social resources to create change. Resources include money, people, and power. The more money, people, and access to power a movement has, the greater its ability to create social change. Resource mobilization can include funding secured from sympathetic allies and donors from within or outside of the impacted community, which can give a movement increased visibility and influence. In short, movements to address social problems will be more successful when strong resources are mobilized. 

Joel Best (2021), who outlined the social problems process, agrees that resources are central to the process of addressing social problems. Best writes (2021: 24), "A society's members are not equal; some have more money than others, or more power, more status, more education, more social contacts, and so on" which are "resources that people can draw on in the social problems process." In other words, because of social inequalities, some social problems will be more quickly addressed by social movements. For instance, when claimsmakers who have ample resources make their claim about the social problem of interest they can draw on their resources, making it easier for their claims to be taken seriously. Those with a high degree of resources may even have influence over media coverage. 

Indigenous Perspective Theory

Aldon Morris (pictured below) researches the origins, nature, patterns, and outcomes of global movements that have successfully resisted and overthrown systems of oppression and injustice. With Indigenous perspective theory, Morris argues it was the mobilization of the Black community’s internal resources, knowledge, power, and skill that powered both the twentieth century civil rights movement (CRM) and the twenty-first century movement for Black lives (BLM).

 

Sociologist Aldon Morris was the 112th president of the American Sociological Association. His work in social movements centers on the efficacy of Black organizing, which powered social movements.

Dr. Aldon Morris © Emile Pitre is all rights reserved and included with permission

In both cases, specific systems of domination were identified by members of oppressed communities, who also planned and executed direct action and brought change. These community-based processes, which center on collective agency and lived expertise, become the foundation for a political base from which deliberate and effective collective action can emerge. To learn more about this work, please either watch the brief video How Do People Make Change or read From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter. 

In addition to classifications of social movements and theorizing on social movements, scholars have studied the stages that social movements typically go through from their emergence to their end. 

  

Stages of Social Movements

Sociologists who study the lifecycle of social movements examine how they emerge, grow, and in some cases, die out. Blumer (1969) and Tilly (1978) outlined a four-stage process of emergence, coalescence, institutionalization, and decline, shown in the figure below.

The Four Stages of Social Movements are Emergence, Coalescence, Institutionalization, and Decline. Where do you think the movement inspired by #BlackLivesMatter is today in these stages?

“The Four Stages of Social Movements” by Kimberly Puttman, based on the work of Blumer and Tilly, is licensed under CC BY 4.0

In the following subsections, we describe and consider the role of social media in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in each of these stages. First, please read these social media posts by two organizers of the BLM movement:

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We don’t deserve to be killed with impunity. We need to love ourselves and fight for a world where Black lives matter. Black people, I love you. I love us. We matter. Our lives matter.

– Alicia Garza, Facebook Post on July 13, 2013

Declaration: black bodies will no longer be sacrificed for the rest of the world’s enlightenment. I am done. I am so done. Trayvon you are loved infinitely. #blacklivesmatter.

– Patrisse Cullors, Facebook comment on July 13, 2013

Emergence

In the emergence stage, people become aware of an issue, and leaders emerge. In becoming aware of a social problem and joining a movement, individuals develop a shared consciousness of that problem that helps strengthen the movement. Successful social movements rely on leadership of some form, though some are far more hierarchical than others.

Hashtag activism is the act of building up public support via social media for a cause, using a hashtag (#) (Pratim 2018: 252). When Patrisse Cullors answered Alicia Garza’s social media declaration with #BlackLivesMatter, the message resonated deeply as part of an overwhelming outpouring of collective grief and anger on social media. Between July and December of 2013, the hashtag was used 5,106 times. By 2016 Twitter (now X) reported that #BlackLivesMatter was the third most popular hashtag in the platform’s 10-year history, with nearly 1,200,000 tweets (Sichynsky 2016).

This organizer is holding a picture of Trayvon Martin, and using her phone to spread the word. A series of viral posts on Facebook introduced the world to the power of a hashtag after the acquittal of the person who killed Trayvon Martin. 

“Rally for Trayvon Martin 24” by Ryan Vaarsi is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza were already seasoned and well-networked organizers with experience using social media, as was Ayọ Tometi, who responded to the posts with plans to purchase the domain blacklivesmatter.com. Together, they deftly used social media to amplify the voices of overpoliced, under-resourced communities of Black people, as they declared to one another, “We matter” and to Americans, “Stop killing us.” Ayọ Tometi, an organizer with a background in communications, did purchase the website, where they linked to organizing resources and articulated the following principles:

• We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.
• We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers on those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.
• We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.
• We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
• The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation (Birdsong 2016).

Coalescence

Next is the coalescence stage, when people join together and organize in order to publicize the issue and raise awareness. As we discuss below, collective action in social movements may involve protests, sit-ins, or demonstrations. It may also rely on more formal means such as speaking at legislative sessions or hosting educational workshops.

At this stage, social media is also transformative. Over the following year, the seasoned organizers described above skillfully leveraged social media to build legitimacy for their claims.

The most popular Twitter hashtag in its first decade was #Ferguson, with 1.7 million tweets between 2014 and 2016 (Anderson 2016). Ferguson, Missouri, is where BLM coalesced as a global movement. When Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in rage and grief over the killing of Michael Brown, Patrisse Cullors and Darnell L. Moore used social media to call for a “Freedom Ride” to Ferguson. Inspired by the activists who mobilized for Black lives during the Civil Rights era, this Freedom Ride would focus national attention on this most recent example of state-sanctioned violence against Black lives.

The plan successfully mobilized the #BlackLivesMatter Social network to gather in St. Louis for three days of solidarity with local organizers, including the Organization for Black Struggle (OBS) and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE).

These marchers in Ferguson, Missouri, protested the killing of Michael Brown. Ferguson is a town of about 18,000 people. Are you surprised that such a small town became the epicenter of a revolutionary movement?

“Protestors demonstrating down West Florissant Ave” by Loavesofbread is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0

Their goal was to build a sustainable coalition around the following demands:

• Justice for the family of Michael Brown and other victims of law enforcement and vigilante violence
• The demilitarization of law enforcement
• National investment in jobs, housing, and schools in Black communities (Mosendz 2014).

The use of #BlackLivesMatter was so prevalent during the Ferguson protests that organizers asked Twitter users to stop using it unless directly related to the actual activities and information about the protests.

Since Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter has been the go-to search term for antiracist organizing. On Dec. 4, 2014, after a New York grand jury declined to indict police officers in the death of Eric Garner, #BlackLivesMatter appeared 189,210 times – the most it was ever used in a single day. On the first anniversary of Garners’ death, the hashtag appeared more than 228,000 times in two days. When Senator Bernie Sanders defended the BLM movement, the hashtag appeared more than 127,000 times on Twitter the following day as many users voiced support for Sanders (Anderson 2016).

Social media users report changing their minds about BLM and issues related to race and policing because of their interactions on social media platforms. Between Ferguson and Minneapolis, the world had a conversation on social media about what we mean when we say "Black Lives Matter."

Social media is credited with helping #BLM to break through decades of colorblind racism and helped people feel okay saying that "Black Lives Matter" (Jennings 2020). Between 2014 and 2020, police killed at least 7680 people in the US. Though only 12% of the population were Black, 25% of those killed were Black (Haddad 2021). Every time another Black life ended due to police brutality, the message got out again. More people engaged in the emerging network. By the time George Floyd’s murder went viral, a match was struck. Around the world, seven years of organizing exploded into the streets.

 

Hashtags are a recent development in the history of social movements but have been significant in their success. #NoDAPL, pictured here, represents the environmental justice movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in 2016. 

NoDAPL by Gone Coastal via Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Institutionalization

In the institutionalization stage, the movement no longer requires grassroots volunteerism. The movement is now an established organization, typically with a hierarchy of leadership and paid staff.

Social media can accelerate a movement toward the institutionalization stage. In some cases, like #BlackLivesMatter, one or more formal organizations might exist alongside the hashtag or general sentiment.

BLM originally operated with a decentralized leadership structure and relied on fiscal sponsorship from a larger non-profit for financial oversight. The stated intention was always to distribute funds to local chapters that were well-positioned to respond to the needs of local communities. This infrastructure was temporarily overwhelmed after receiving 90 million dollars in donations during 2020. Social media coverage during this period included accusations of misuse and misappropriation of funds, and the organization came under scrutiny for a lack of transparency. In this case, social media inhibited the success of the movement, though it did produce structural change in the organization.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation responded to these growing pains by reorganizing and creating a Transparency Center on the website with updates on a new board of directors and links to tax filings. Their 2022 disclosures list 42 million dollars in assets and reports distributing more than 26 million dollars in grants to local BLM chapters and directly to families of victims of police violence in 2021 (Morrison 2022).

Decline

When people fall away and adopt a new movement, the movement successfully brings about the change it sought, or when people no longer take the issue seriously, the movement falls into the decline stage.

Decline simply refers to the winding down of an effort. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a movement is not successful. On the contrary, a period of decline naturally follows successful efforts.

It is also important to note that the status quo is not easily changed, and successful social movements also face periods in which their gains are challenged and tested. That’s why it is important to view individual interconnected social movements within a larger historical context, as we will in our discussion of the social problems process on the following page.

The Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century was undoubtedly one of the most successful social movements in history, yet in spite of the notable gains, the movement eventually lost momentum when the most visible leadership and supporters, including Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated, while more radical organizers, like Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, and Assata Shakur were criminalized. Feel free to click the following links if you’d like to know more about Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, and Assata Shakur.

Morris (2021) observes that, “the decentralized leadership structure of the BLM movement and other contemporary social movements seems to have provided a bulwark against this sort of decapitation.” When Garza, Tomati, and Cullors were targeted with misinformation and disinformation about them, the movement itself did not falter. Distributed leadership allowed the movement to thrive while the original organizers continued to develop new projects in their quest for a world that values Black lives.

As of 2025, the BLM website is maintained by the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, with current updates about the status of their ongoing work for racial justice and liberation. They also provide a link where people can report disinformation related to BLM. #BlackLivesMatter still trends on social media to signify racial injustice.

While the Black Lives Matter movement may have passed, it leaves a lasting legacy that continues to shape anti-incarceration and anti-violence social justice organizing around the county. It also helped spark a national conversation on systemic racism and inspires antiracist thought and action today. 

On the next page, we revisit the social problems process from our first chapter, applying the BLM movement and broader antiracist collective action to that process.