Start Small, Build Big: Negotiating Opportunities in Media Markets

We track the strategic choices of Rhode Island Coalition against Domestic Violence (RICADV), a statewide collective actor working in one media market to expand opportunities to promote its mission. We reconstruct an organizational life history describing how RICADV built its communications capacity and deepened internal and external relations, thereby increasing media standing with Rhode Island journalists. To measure growth in media standing quantitatively, we analyze print coverage of three comparable clusters of domestic violence murders occurring in Rhode Island between 1996 and 2002. Over this interval, RICADV rose from invisibility to become Rhode Island reporters' foremost source for background information on domestic-violence murders. Also, the use of language identifying these murders as domestic violence increased sixteen-fold. Stressing dialogic and relational approaches, we conclude that despite restricted access to corporatized media markets, intentional collective actors can negotiate and expand media opportunities by strategically selecting mission-relevant media projects that match their existing resources and networks.