The Ambivalence of Public Opportunity: Activism and the Media after 9/11.

The paper investigates the impact of 9/11 on the media access of Danish CSOs working on distant issues. Theoretically it argues that the media is the central element in the public opportunity structure of CSOs. The concept of a public opportunity structure refers to the possibilities of CSOs to gain access to the media and be able to offer alternative and critical interpretations of political events and situations. This kind of access is important because the main source of CSO influence is their participation in public debate. It is argued that major global events, such as 9/11, can have a significant impact on public opportunities as they change the media's agenda and demand for CSO information and interpretation. The paper tests four hypotheses related to public opportunities: contraction, expansion, non-impact and mixed-effects. The data consists of newspaper articles from two Danish newspapers (Politiken and Jyllands-Posten) on three Danish CSOs (Ibis, Folkekirkens Nødhjælp, and Amnesty International). The data is drawn from the two three-year periods before and after 11 September 2001. The analysis concludes that opportunities vary considerable between newspapers and CSOs. One of the newspapers, Politiken, thus expanded opportunities for CSOs, while Jyllands-Posten slightly contracted them. The expanded opportunities in Politiken were, furthermore, unequally distributed, with Folkekirkens Nødhjælp and Amnesty International accounting for the increase. The results consequently primarily support the mixed-effects hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]