Where is the Color in Occupy? Race, Class and Gender in the Occupy Movement

Speaker

Description
When a Canadian magazine, Adbusters, issued the call last summer to Occupy Wall Street, no one could predict the response that would follow.  Many have pointed to the lack of race-explicit analysis by the Occupy movement and the domination of white middle class participation.  Organizers of color involved with Occupy discuss how race is manifested in their city and how Occupy can lead with a race-explicit analysis.

We’re happy to say that “We Are Many,” the edited Occupy volume by AK Press, includes a summary of findings from the Occupy Research General Demographic and Political Participation Survey (ORGS). Please read more about the book from editor Kate Khatib, then order your copy ASAP!

We’re pleased to announce the release of the Occupy Research General Survey (ORGS) facet browser. You can use this tool to drill down into the more than 5,000 responses to the Occupy Research General Survey.  For example, you might like to know about the survey responses of occupiers who are from California, and have been to a camp “many times”. Or responses from people who donated money, food, or goods, and also attended a general assembly. Select as many facets of the dataset as you’d like, and share your findings via unique links to your set of selections. Enjoy, and please tweet/share using the hashtag #occupyresearch! The ORGS facet browser is by Charlie de Tar.

Click here to try it out.

Data sets

One major focus was the Occupy Research General Demographic and Political Participation Survey (ORGS), which aimed to gather information about the demographics of Occupiers as well as about various forms of civic and political participation in the Occupy movement. The survey was designed through a transparent and collaborative process that included Occupiers and researchers from across the globe.

The survey was conducted by the Occupy Research Network (http://occupyresearch.net), which includes academics, activists, students, community researchers, and others, with support from DataCenter (http://www.datacenter.org). A list of people involved in the ORGS survey is available at http://occupyresearch.wikispaces.com/surveys#People.

To explore questions about issues of interest to the movement, hackathon participants worked with publicly available data sets as well as social media data gathered by scraping information from sites like Twitter (State and Space), online news sources, and media sharing platforms like Youtube (Occupy Video as Data: Visualizing Temporal Narratives).

Hacked!

Faceted Browsing
Occupy Research has made the ORGS survey data available in many formats for analysis and remixing. In order to make the data accessible to more people who might be interested in exploring the survey’s findings, one group created a faceted navigation interface.

http://orgs-facet.tirl.org/exhibit.html

Text Mural
This mural draws from survey respondents’ answers to the question “If you participate in the Occupy movement, what TOP THREE concerns motivate you TO PARTICIPATE?” — the larger the word, the more it was used in people’s survey responses.  This is a collaboration between Nadia Afghani and Gilad Lotan.

State and Space

Also blending text and imagery, this project uses the web service Topsy and a Ruby script to search for tweets that document police misconduct or benevolence, can be traced back to a specific officer, and are related to Occupy events. After cleaning the tweets of web noise, e.g. http://, the project visualizes the prominence of particular keywords associated with police misconduct. As a balancing counterpoint, the project team is also searching for keywords associated with positive instances of police behavior.

Visions of Occupy
This project seeks to creatively juxtapose the beliefs we have which inspire us to occupy, and visual traces of the physical occupations themselves.

Using data collected this winter by the Occupy Research General Survey (administered by OccupyResearch), we take the answer to question 42—”In just a few words, what are you trying to achieve with your participation in the Occupy movement”—and pair it with a Flickr photo tagged with the camp name that the same respondent mentions. This means that while the photo displayed and quote may be completely unrelated (both in source and in specific content), viewers are presented with locational context and imagery.

Displaying ORGS survey results by State (by quantile)
Map by Don Blair and Chris Schweidler, using GeoCommons.

Exploring the Civic Anatomy of Occupy
According to the  Occupy Research General Survey (ORGS), OWS sympathizers and participants are among the most civically engaged individuals of the U.S. population, they possess an active voting record, and tend to be involved in a wide range of organizations and civic actions.  The ORGS allows us to explore some of the characteristics of the diverse “civic cultures” of online sympathizers who have brought broad support to OWS in the U.S.

Visualizing “Phrase Nets” using Many Eyes
Also using Many Eyes, this is a visualization of answers to the question “What is your top reason for participating in the Occupy Movemment” in which the most commonly occuring terms appear larger.

Overall the second #OccupyData hackathon was a success, with more participants than the first round, many creative explorations and demos of new data visualization possibilities, and a strong desire by participants to continue developing shared, distributed, free and open approaches to social movement based research.

Investigating the civic anatomy of OWS is of critical importance for those who seek to understand the movement’s potential as a force to promote social change through different forms of social and political action, from community-based work and peaceful protest to participatory deliberation and electoral politics. Comparing the different patterns of organizational affiliation (Graph 1) between self-defined participants and non-participants in the movement helps us to think about different civic trajectories, and the diverse pool of mobilizing practices from which Occupiers draw their strategies and political views.

Graph 1. Dimensions of Organizational Affiliation, 

OWS Participants vs. Non-participants

The experience in non-profit organizations is clearly central for participants and non-participants. However, the space of the political in Occupy seems significantly shaped by the trajectory of sympathizers in social justice organizations, political parties, labor unions, voluntary associations, affinity and cultural groups  (see Table 1). In some cases, affiliation to these institutions is higher among Occupiers than in the overall American population. As aptly argued by professor Wendy Brown, OWS should be understood fundamentally as a civic movement galvanized by the economic crisis, and the reaction to neoliberal policies that have threatened the foundations of democratic governance and public life in America.

Table 1. Organizational affiliation: “I belong and actively participate in…

*** p <0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

Source: ORGS (U.S. residents, n=3,715)

In the electoral front, the voting record of Occupy participants in the ORGS is particularly high when compared to the average voter turnout of the country (64% in the 2008 presidential election). According to ORGS data, 87.5% of Occupiers voted in the 2008 presidential elections, and 80.6% plan to vote next November. These results echo findings of ongoing surveys of visitors to the OWS website.

The obvious conclusion of this evidence is that the popular outrage expressed by the movement is not the result of extremist factions of society but of civic discontent across broad sections of the American public. This is not to say that Occupy is merely an assemblage of political groups and identities. The diversity of  civic cultures and trajectories of occupiers should move activists and researchers to critically interrogate the historical roots of the movement, and its emergent identities and structures in connection with existent forms of civic governance in the American society. Answering all these questions may seem an elusive task in the case of a self-defined ‘leaderless’ movement; however, understanding the political and the ‘civics’ in Occupy is critical to assess the future of the movement, and its potential role as a transformative force of American democracy.

We used Many Eyes to visualize the responses to the survey question: “What is your top reason for participating in the Occupy Movement”?

For textual data, Many Eyes allows you to simply paste a large body of text into a field on their website.  To do this:

1. Create an account. Create an account at Many Eyes; you will be sent an email to confirm your registration.
2. Upload your data. Logging into Many Eyes, in the left-hand side of the main page you’ll see a link for “upload your data”. This will lead you to a page that will lead you the process in a straightforward manner.  If you’re analyzing simple text data, as we were, you can simply copy the text file you want to analyze, and paste it into the field provided.
3. Create your visualization. After you have pasted in your data, and provided a name for your dataset, click “Create”.  This will lead you to page that provides you with various visualization options.  Above, we show the result that was generated by the “Word Cloud” option.

We’ve also generated a zipocc of the survey data, that simply contains the zip codes, latitude and longitude, and place names for people who responded to the survey.

Introduction

Inspired by the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street began on September 17, 2011 in New York City, and led to a broader Occupy movement throughout the U.S. and internationally. The Occupy movement is focused on social and economic inequalities, particularly wealth and power disparities between the wealthiest 1% and everyone else, the 99%.

The Occupy Research General Demographic and Political Participation Survey (ORGS) aimed to gather information about the demographics of participants, as well as forms of civic and political participation in the Occupy movement. ORGS also included questions about forms of communication and media use within the Occupy movement. The survey was designed through a transparent and collaborative process that included Occupy participants and researchers from across the globe.

The survey was conducted from December 7th, 2011, to January 7th, 2012. A total of 5,074 surveys were collected.  This summary provides a brief overview of key findings; we expect to release more in-depth analysis over time via the project site, http://occupyresearch.net. Included here are the frequency counts and percents for the closed ended questions.

The survey was conducted by the Occupy Research Network (http://occupyresearch.net), which includes academics, activists, students, community researchers, and others, with support from DataCenter (http://www.datacenter.org), a U.S. based research organization. A list of people involved in this survey is available at http://occupyresearch.wikispaces.com/surveys#People. For more information or if you have questions, please contact owsgeneralsurvey AT gmail.com.

Methodology

We initially hoped to conduct a large number of face to face surveys at Occupy camps, following a simple random sampling method that is detailed in our manual for surveyors (http://bit.ly/OccupyResearchSurveyandGuide), as well as in a webinar presentation used to train surveyors (http://prezi.com/abentbthm65z/occupy-research-survey-training). However, prior to and during the survey period the majority of Occupy camps were raided and shut down by police.

As a result, the ORGS survey team turned to online outreach, where we used a mixed method combining systematic Facebook outreach with snowball sampling via email and social media.

We used an iMacros script to post the survey description and link to 883 Occupy related Facebook groups, using the most comprehensive list of Occupy related Facebook groups available, known as the B.E.S.T. database ( Available at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An-A-lITWCO8dHJjVlplQklhOWNxR1YzQmZXaWN3TkE#gid=0 ). We also posted the survey to the 505 email addresses publicly associated with Occupy groups (again from the BEST database). Additionally, the site http://occupytogether.org added a link to the survey in the upper right hand corner of their site during the survey period. Finally, members of the ORGS survey team posted the survey information extensively to personal and professional networks, blogs, social media, and via twitter.

Overall, we gathered 5,074 completed surveys, the vast majority of which (5,040, or 99.3%) were completed online.

Of those (4,382) who answered the question “Where did you find the link to this survey,” 57% said via a link from Facebook, 20% from a personal contact, 12% from occupytogether.org, 7.3% from twitter, and 4% from occupyresearch.net.

Limitations

The ORGS sample is non-random and therefore does not have external validity: our findings should not be read as conclusions about the overall Occupy movement. In addition, as an online survey, we can expect our data to be deeply biased to reflect the demographics and political participation characteristics of those with greater levels of Internet access. The survey was in English only, and therefore fails to reflect non-English speakers who may be Occupy participants.  The high proportion of respondents who came to the survey via Facebook rather than in other ways also skews results – for example, in the responses to questions about recent Occupy related media use. However, the survey does contain data from several thousand self-identified Occupy movement participants, and will be of interest to anyone seeking to better understand the Occupy movement across multiple sites.

Key Findings

Involvement in Occupy Wall Street

The vast majority of people we surveyed (91.3%) report performing various activities related to the Occupy movement.

• The most common activities are: posting on Facebook (74.3%) and holding face-to-face conversations about the movement (72.7%), followed by signing petitions (59.7%) and marching in protests (49.3%).
• Others donate money (38.8%), food, or needed goods to a camp (23.7%); make phone calls to elected officials (23.7%); or organize events or actions (18.7%).
• About a fifth of participants write blog posts (18.3%), while 7.9% make video about Occupy.
• A smaller, core group of participants report getting arrested (2.3%).

Engagement with the movement in the public space is a prominent feature of participants’ experience in the Occupy movement.

• 63.3% have been to a camp.
• Most attend General Assemblies (68.7%) and participate in protests organized at camps (68.6%).
• More than a third volunteer to provide food or services (41.1%), take part in workshops or events (39.5%), or participate in working groups (38%).
• 17.2% lived or slept in camps, and 3.6% got arrested at camps.

Organizational Affiliation and Civic Engagement

The majority of survey respondents (86.8%) self-identify as participants in OWS, and more than half of them (59%) have previously been involved in other social movements.

Survey respondents are engaged in a wide range of civic and political organizations, representing the variety of civic cultures and interests characteristic of the U.S. population. However, they tend to have distinct degrees of involvement in particular organizations.

• The majority (57%) belonge to non-profit organizations, and most respondents declare that they are active in nonprofits.
• Although 52.5% belong to political parties, only 21.6% of respondents are actively involved.
• Social justice groups and other volunteer associations are also preferred sites for respondents’ active involvement with their communities. Other sites of active community engagement include professional associations, cultural groups, churches or religious organizations, and affinity groups.

There are many ways in which survey respondents have taken civic action in their communities over the past year:

• The overwhelming majority (91%) have signed petitions and boycotted or deliberately bought certain products for political, ethical or environmental reasons (89.9%).
• More than two thirds have contacted or attempted to contact a politician or civil servant to express their views (77%) , and 67.7% have donated money or raised funds for a social or political activity.
• Almost two thirds have taken part in demonstrations (66.6%); joined an Internet political forum or discussion group (65%); or attended a political meeting or rally in the last year (62.5%).
• 40% have contacted or appeared in the media to express their views.

The overwhelming  majority of participants in our survey are also actively involved in electoral politics.

• 87.3 % voted in the 2008 presidential elections, and
• 81% % plan to vote in the November elections.

However, political preferences of survey participants are mostly fragmented, and include an important number of independents.

• More than a third declare that they are independent or not identified with any political  party (38.4%), while almost an equal number declare that they are sympathizers with the Democratic party (37.9%).
• The political views the rest of participants are widely diverse, consisting of many other parties and political causes (22.6%), and a small minority identifying with the Republican party (1.1%)

We found that most respondents (76.6%) voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections. However, voting intentions for the 2012 presidential election appeared divided and in flux.

• 45% of participants plan to vote for the Democratic candidate,
• 35.9% are undecided, and
• 19.1% plan to vote for other candidates, including the candidate of the Republican party (1.9%).

Media Use

Among those who answered questions about usage of different types of media for news and information about the Occupy movement, survey respondents are heavy users of social media (as to be expected given the proportion of survey respondents arriving via a link from Facebook). Print and broadcast media were not used as frequently or as widely by survey respondents.

• The majority (63.7%) report using Facebook in the past 24 hours,
• Nearly half (43.8%) used Occupy movement websites in the past 24 hours, while a similar percent (42.6%) used word of mouth for Occupy news and information in the past 24 hours.
• 41.5% used email, while a third used YouTube (29.2%).
• Just a quarter (23.8%) used newspapers, blogs (23.7%), or Twitter (23.3%).
• A fifth (19.2%) used a livestreaming video site, TV (17.3%), or radio (17.3%).

Who completed the survey

• The majority (85.7%) of the people who filled out the survey are in the USA, while 14.3% live abroad.
• More than half of the survey respondents (52.9%) identify as women, 43.7% as men, and about 1% (50) as transgender.  In regards to sexual identity, the majority identify as heterosexual/straight (76.4%), while 15.5% identify as LGBTQ.
• The average age of survey respondents is 42. Almost half (45%) are between the ages of 25 and 44, followed by those  between 44 and 64. Two out of ten are under 25 or over 65.
• 80.8% identify as white.  There is a diversity of other races/ethnicities including Latino/a (5.3%), Asian/Pacific Islander (5.4%),  Native American (5.3%),  and African American (2.9%).
• Almost half (49.2%) of the respondents identify as working or lower middle class. More than half (54.4%) report that they earn less than $50,000.  Just under one third are employed full time. 8.6% report being unemployed, and 7.6% say they are underemployed.  17.6% are students.
• Over one quarter (29.8%) have graduate degrees, followed by those that completed college (26%) or some college (23%).
• Almost half (47.5%) of the respondents are renters, and 41.3% are homeowners. 8.6% say they live with their parents.
• Respondents are fairly evenly split between being married/in a partnership, and single. 17.9% report having one or more children, and almost half (47.2%) say they support at least one person with their income.

Frequency Tables

Part 1.  Occupy Participation

Part 2. Movement Participation

Organizational Affiliation and Civic Engagement

Part 3. Political Preferences

Part 4 Media Use and Occupy

‘

Demographics

Gender / Sexual Identity

Age

Race / Ethnicity

Employment / Income / Class

Education

Motivations

Respondents gave 0 to 3 reasons for participating or for not participating or both.

Home/ Housing

Family

Survey Implementation

Links to Data

The following links are to the full, anonymized dataset from ORGS in SPSS format, as a spreadsheet, and as a csv. In addition, there’s a link to the codebook. If you download and work with this data, please leave comments/links here at this post!

Occupy General Survey clean data:

• occupyresearch.net/archive/03192012_OR_data_download_clean7_2.sav
• occupyresearch.net/archive/03192022_OR_data_download_clean7.sav.xls
• occupyresearch.net/archive/20130322_OR_data_download_clean7.csv

• occupyresearch.net/archive/20120322_codebook.xls

Easy to print version survey: http://bit.ly/openqueshighlightoccupygen

1. anonymizing the responses (some people put their contact info in the final open ended question) and

2. coding the responses to a question about which physical Occupy camp/location people participated in.

Once 2. is complete, we can cut the data by camp and provide that subset to each Occupy (so the Oakland Occupy Research working group will get early access to all the data from Oakland occupiers, Occupy Boston gets Boston occupiers, etc). We’re planning to organize a webinar & resources to help teams from each Occupation analyze their own data. If you’re interested in that part of the process please join the occupyresearch.net wiki and get on the mailing list!

In the future, we’ll clean, code, and analyze the full results, release a report, and release the anonymized complete data set for others to analyze as they’d like (under a creative commons license). Thanks to everyone who has participated in this process so far!

Quick links

• Take the survey online: http://svy.mk/owsurvey-net.
• Download the survey guide: http://bit.ly/OccupyResearchSurveyandGuide.
• A prezi training on how to do the survey f2f: http://prezi.com/abentbthm65z/occupy-research-survey-training/

Tweet This!

Last Chance! Take #OccupyResearch survey: http://bit.ly/owsurvey-net Research by/4 the movement FTW! More info: http://bit.ly/owsurvey-info

Background:

The OccupyResearch network is pleased to launch this exciting survey,
which aims to create a better understanding of who engages with the
Occupy movement, and how — it includes questions about media,
communication, political activities, and more. The survey is open to
people living in any country, regardless of their level of involvement
with the Occupy movement. The more people we can reach with this survey,
the better we can reflect on this exciting time — so we invite you to
spread the word. You can pitch in by:

• Posting it on social networks
• Sharing it with your local Occupy activists and groups
• Contacting or starting a research working group at an Occupy site
• Conducting the survey yourself
• Getting involved in a survey training workshop

Get started! Share this link to the survey with your networks:
http://svy.mk/owsurvey-net.

At Occupy sites, the survey can either be conducted online, if internet access is available in the field, or on paper. For both scenarios, we’ve created a comprehensive guide to conducting the survey, including detailed directions, a script, important information regarding consent, and many useful pointers.

Download that guide as a PDF here: http://bit.ly/OccupyResearchSurveyandGuide.

Coming soon: Interactive training materials for surveyors, and on-the-ground training at Occupy sites! Get in touch with us at owsgeneralsurvey@gmail.com and let us know how you’d like to be involved.

The survey is open until January 9th, 2011. Once closed, the data will be publicly available through the OccupyResearch website. The survey is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 General License.

The survey is being conducted by the OccupyResearch Network (http://occupyresearch.net), which includes over 200 activists, academics, and researchers, and DataCenter (www.datacenter.org), a U.S. based research organization. For more information about who is involved, see http://occupyresearch.net/surveys.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this exciting project, and happy surveying!

-OccupyResearch Survey Team