Crucible of conflict : abortion rights organizing in Texas

This dissertation uses digital records of a massive online conversation among opponents of an abortion restriction bill in Texas during summer 2013. It describes the geography of the participants, investigates the role of emotions and social ties in shaping engagement, and describes a radical change in the way movement participants talked about their aims. Theoretically, it approaches the investigation of abortion rights organizing from the perspective of both social movement studies and the sociological and demographic study of reproductive health. Methodologically, it employs a hybrid of computational and qualitative techniques to analyze a very large dataset.