This study develops a positive feedback model of media attention to SMOs. This simple model suggests that when SMOs receive some attention, this initial coverage may lead to more. Positive feedback is constituted by three mechanisms: 1) as an organization receives more coverage it is exposed to more journalists, and is constructed as more news-worthy as journalists make sense of their own and others’ past coverage of the organization. 2) When an organization receives coverage it becomes more visible to other actors such as the state and potential supporters, thus potentially becoming more influential and attracting more resources to leverage for future coverage. 3) When an organization’s tactics are successful at attracting media coverage they are more likely to repeat those tactics.
Positive feedback explains why we see such massive inequality and volatility in media attention to SMOs. The model also led to two expectations which were empirically tested.
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The first was that, like realizations from other positive feedback systems, such as forest-fires, avalanches or city sizes, total media attention would be power-law distributed across SMOs. Second, following historical sociologists and economic historians, I argued that SMO media attention trajectories would be path dependent: contingent on key events early on in historical process which might set SMOs on paths wherein media attention largely reinforced itself.
I tested these expectations using mixed methods and multiple sources of data. First, I used new methodology from statistical physics to show that, across a variety of media sources, media attention to SMOs is characterized by a power-law distribution. Second, I used the comparative case of the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panther Party to show that media attention to SMOs can be contingent on key events and small initial differences in the characteristics of groups. These two groups were initially very similar in terms of media representation and relevant organization characteristics such as resources, framing of their goals, tactics, the political opportunity structure they faced and their relationship with the state. Yet, by the end of the twentieth century the Black Panther Party had received roughly eighty times as many articles in the NYT as RAM had. Through the reconstruction of process, and comparison across these groups, I argued that positive feedback made more sense as an explanation than did exogenous variables.
This argument is not necessarily limited to SMOs. Business firms may also be subject to positive feedback in the media, which they can parlay into dominance of their markets (Rindova, Pollock, and Hayward 2006). The argument and methodology may also be of interest to those studying the popularity of cultural objects which are subject to positive feedback processes (Rossman, Esparza, and Bonacich 2010; Salganik et al. 2006), those studying positive feedback in collective action formally, or through the use of power-laws
49
(Marwell and Oliver 1993; Biggs 2005), and those studying contingent, path dependent histories (Mahoney 2000; Pierson 2000; Sewell 1996).
Despite the model’s fit with the evidence here, a number of qualifications are in order. First, certain types of SMOs (e.g. labor unions) that interact directly with targets will be less dependent on, and thus less affected by, the media. Second, the positive feedback model tells us little about when groups will receive media attention. In part this reflects the inherent unpredictably of positive feedback processes (Salganik et al. 2006), however the question of what ‘sparks’ positive feedback processes should be addressed by future work. Finally, while, positive feedback does not imply that growth continues on forever unboundedly, it does lack an account of how coverage ends.
Despite these limitations, positive feedback within the media is a defining feature of the environment within which SMOs act. The power-law distribution of media coverage generated by these positive feedback dynamics means that most SMOs receive very little attention (Sobieraj 2011), while a few organizations will receive extremely high levels of attention. Positive feedback also means that once set into motion, media waves do not die easily. Finally, positive feedback means that prediction of which SMO will receive how much coverage, and when, will continue to be difficult.
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