Professor

Communication Arts & Sciences and Political Science Senior Scholar, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy
The Pennsylvania State University

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Civil Society and Protest Groups

One area of research I have explored only occasionally is the intersection between governance and group decision making that concerns public protests and other social movement organizations.

I talk about these issues briefly in The group in society, Democracy in small groups and Political communication and deliberation. The most sustained discussion of this issue comes from an article I co-authored:

West, M., & Gastil, J. (2004).Deliberation at the margins: Participant accounts of face-to-face public deliberation at the 1999-2000 world trade protests in Seattle and Prague. Qualitative Research Reports,5, 1-7.

Stretching beyond the boundaries of this research category, I have also recently helped to set up a research team that will look at polarization and extreme views in a spectrum of groups ranging from protest groups to terror cells. One article arising partially as a result of their findings is:
Reedy, J., Gastil, J., & Gabbay, M. (2013). Terrorism and small groups: A framework for advancing research on terrorist teams. Small Group Research, 44, 599-626