Gamson was a leader and organizer of the 1965 anti-Vietnam Warteach-in at the University of Michigan and continued to participate in anti-war sentiment and protest throughout the 60s and early 70s. He led a fast by university professors against University involvement in military research.[16] His wife,Zelda F. Gamson, was also an active participant in the peace movement and was involved in the 1971 March on Washington.[16]
Gamson is also known for his writing about and creation of simulation games used primarily in teaching and organizational training environments.[17] These includeSIMSOC: Simulated Society (1969),[18]What’s News: A Game Simulation of TV News (1984),[19] and theGlobal Justice Game (2007).[20]
Gamson was also instrumental in the creation offantasy baseball andfantasy sports. He created the first fantasy baseball league in Boston in 1960, the "Baseball Seminar," where colleagues would form rosters that earned points on the players' final standings in batting average,RBI,ERA and wins.[21] Gamson later brought the idea with him to theUniversity of Michigan where some professors played the game. These included historianRobert Sklar, whose students includedDaniel Okrent; Okrent later wrote a book that was the key catalyst for the modernfantasy sports industry.[21][22]
Gamson and his wife Zelda, who lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, had two children, Jennifer andJoshua,[23] and five grandchildren.
Gamson's Law of Proportionality or simplyGamson's Law was suggested byEric C. Browne andMark N. Franklin in 1971.[24] 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.[25] 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 paperA theory of coalition formation, published in 1961 by William Gamson.[26]
Gamson, William A.; Modigliani, Andre. 1989. "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach".American Journal of Sociology 95: 1–37.
Gamson, William, A.; Wolfsfeld, Gadi. 1993. "Movements and Media as Interacting Systems."The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528: 114–125.
Gamson, William A.; Meyer, David. 1996. "Framing political opportunity." In D. McAdam, J. McCarthy, & M. Zald (Eds.),Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, pp. 275–290). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803987.014
Gamson, William A. 1997. "On Coming to Terms with the Past."American Journal of Sociology 103: 210–215.
Gamson, William A. 2011. “From Outsiders to Insiders: The Changing Perception of Emotional Culture and Consciousness among Social Movement Scholars.”Mobilization 16: 405–418.
Gamson, William A. 2013. “Games Throughout the Life-Cycle,”Simulation and Gaming, Vol. 44: 609–623.
^Browne, Eric C.; Franklin, Mark N. (1973). "Aspects of Coalition Payoffs in European Parliamentary Democracies".The American Political Science Review.67 (2):453–469.doi:10.2307/1958776.JSTOR1958776.S2CID145313614.
