While this tends to be controversial among hardcore activists, using the promise of social esteem can increase turnout and overall support of your movement. Many find it performative and immoral when people join a movement just for the social clout it brings them, and while that’s true, performative activists are still supporters of the movement, and can help create the leverage needed for social change. Thus if you are prioritizing tangible change making over weeding out performatives, you can use social esteem to your advantage.
A robust study called, Social Esteem and Participation in Contentious Politics: A Field Experiment at an LGBT Pride Rally , found that the promise of social esteem increases the likelihood of people participating in a protest. The researchers created an experiment that measured three types of protest participation – of intent to attend, actual attendance, and reported attendance. When people who were invited to the protest were told that going would be admired by their peers, all three of these measures increased.
Additionally, this article, called What Makes a Good Neighbor? Race, Place, and Norms of Political Participation, looked into the way various neighborhoods socially rewarded those who participated in the political scene. They found that predominantly BIPOC neighborhoods both measure participation differently and rewarded political participators more than white neighborhoods. Additionally, they found that the likelihood of an individual participating can be more closely linked to what neighborhood they are in than what kind of person they are.
If you are hoping to utilize social esteem, and/or are organizing among white people or neighborhoods, pay attention to ways that you can promise social rewards to those who participate in your movement. This may be through certain phrasing and images in your advertising, or other methods that tell your audience how cool the people who protest are!
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