[bendoernberg]

Frame Alignment theory is the sociological term for what you're describing. After Occupy there were millions of people who were more prepared for a message about the corruption of elites and the need for ordinary people to reclaim democracy in a profound way.

Beyond framing, Occupy also created social networks between activists, and those activists gained a lot of experience and developed specific skills. We saw an example of this network and these skills being deployed with Occupy Sandy, where those networks were used to out-organize FEMA and the Red Cross in areas of NJ after Hurricane Sandy.

Occupy also popularized and tested various forms of social organization and social technologies. Thousands of people now know from experience the strengths and weaknesses of permanent encampments as a tactic, consensus decision making, the people's mic, etc. Mass R&D.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-s...

[oh_sigh]

How about frame alignment but in the opposite direction? I'm convinced the cruddiness of Occupy made more conservatives out of my somewhat liberal friends than any thing conservatives specifically did in the recent past.

[wpietri]

I'm suspicious of the "made conservative" notion there. If someone's devotion political point of view A is so shallow that some people being irritating is enough to change them to B forever, I suspect they were always a dispositional B.

Young people getting conservative as they get older is nothing new. As Douglas Adams wrote:

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

And that's for something as neutral as tech. The older people get, the more they get out of the status quo. My dad jokes that he got a lot more conservative when his bank account had something in it.

[bradleyankrom]

Really? Because there are a lot of cruddy things in the recent past to consider. I lived in New York during the Occupy rallies several years ago, I don't recall them having significant effects much beyond Wall Street (literally, the street/downtown train stops). There was a lot of coverage, but I didn't get the impression that people were losing their shit about it.

[oh_sigh]

People weren't losing their shit...more like laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

[sjg007]

Trump also took on this message as well in his own way.