Network effects in environmental justice struggles: An investigation of conflicts between mining companies and civil society organizations from a network perspective

© 2017 Aydin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This paper examines conflicts that occur between mining companies and civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world and offers an innovative analysis of mining conflicts from a social network perspective. The analysis showed that, as the number of CSOs involved in a conflict increased, its outcome was more likely to be perceived as a success in terms of environmental justice (EJ); if a CSO was connected to other central CSOs, the average perception of EJ success was likely to increase; and as network distance between two conflicts increased (or decreased), they were more likely to lead to different (or similar) EJ outcomes. Such network effects in mining conflicts have policy implications for EJ movements. It would be a strategic move on the part of successful CSOs to become involved in other major conflicts and disseminate information about how they achieved greater EJ success.