New Technologies as an Outcome of Social Movement Activism

Recently, scholars have focused on a growing number of social movement consequences. However, one important type of intended outcome has been almost completely overlooked: the development of new technologies. This article deepens the literature on social movements and knowledge production by taking into account insights from the literature on the sociology of science. By focusing on new technology as an outcome of activism, the paper contributes in three specific ways: First, I present four causal mechanisms that show how activists trigger the development of new technologies. Second, I demonstrate how the development of new technologies is a highly contested goal among activists, leading to divisions within social movements. Third, I point to the long history of the process central to this paper: far from it being a new development, activists were already trying to bring about technological change in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. I focus on the animal rights movement as a crucial case study, which, despite its empirical importance, is often neglected in social movement studies. Methodologically, I rely on publications of SMOs, interviews with activists, and secondary literature. Ultimately, this research underlines the importance of new technology as a “dependent variable” in social movement studies.