William A. Gamson

William Anthony Gamson (born January 27, 1934) is a professor of Sociology at Boston College, where he is also the co-director of the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP).[1] He is the author of numerous books and articles on political discourse, the mass-media and social movements from as early as the 1960s. His works include The Strategy of Social Protest,[2] WHAT'S NEWS (1984),[3] and Talking Politics (2002),[4] as well as numerous editions of SimSoc.[5]

Gamson, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1959, was the 85th president of the American Sociological Association in 1994.[6] He is also a 1978 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.[7] In 1962, he won the AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research.[8]

Gamson's Law

Gamson's Law of Proportionality or simply Gamson's Law was suggested by Eric C. Browne and Mark N. Franklin in 1971.[9] They stated that there is proportionality between the numerical representation of each political force in a government and their number of seats in the parliament.[10] It was based on the idea that each actor in government expects a payoff proportional to the weight that it contributes to the coalition, that had been proposed in the paper A theory of coalition formation, published in 1961 by William Gamson.[11]

Selected bibliography

References

  1. "William Gamson's Homepage". Boston College. Archived from the original on 2010-10-29. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  2. The Strategy of Social Protest ISBN 0-534-12078-4
  3. WHAT'S NEWS (1984) ISBN 0-02-911110-2
  4. Talking Politics (2002) ISBN 0-521-43679-6
  5. SimSoc 5th edition (2000) ISBN 0-684-87140-8
  6. "Presidents: William A. Gamson". American Sociological Association. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  7. "1978 Foundation Program Areas". John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Archived from the original on 2008-05-16. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  8. History & Archives: AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research
  9. JSTOR 1958776
  10. "Party Size and Portfolio Payoffs. A Study of the Mechanism Underlying Gamson’s Law of Proportionality" (PDF).
  11. JSTOR 2090664

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 14, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.