Social Movement Analysis

The Bush administration's National Security Strategy was a product of America’s belief in American interventionism and exceptionalism, and marked a dramatic shift in the United State's foreign policy. In addition, it showcased the Bush administration’s push to find answers to 9/11. In the few years after the tragedy, the US would seek to strike a blow in the war on terror in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist regime had supposed ties to terror groups such as Al-Qaeda. The nation quickly moved to war, and invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003. However, even though the war was quickly declared over, the continued deaths of American troops in Iraq gave rise to powerful protests. Artist Joe Wezoreck’s collage War President, critiques the continued stay of American troops in Iraq. Once Iraqi accounts of the war, such as Wendell Steveanson’s collection of stories “Dispatches from Iraq” surfaced, the American public truly began to question the real purpose behind the Iraq war. These sources initiated the changing perception of the American identity as a bastion of freedom and democracy as a result of the Iraq war. In the end, the Iraq war ultimately failed to provide answers to a post 9/11 nation, and instead revealed the flaws of interventionism and muddled American foreign policy to the disillusioned American

Social movements are not spontaneous events, and they must build towards their goals over time on a series of phases and preconditions. Successful social movements rely on a number of micro and macro factors including efficient organizational structures, the ability to mobilize human and material resources, as well as effective leadership and rapid diffusion of ideas. As it will be shown, the presence of mobilizing structures, movement frames as well as suitable political opportunities combined with reactionary incentives during the Civil Rights Movement helped culminate both short and long term societal changes.

American politics has evolved significantly over the years. The election this year involves a lot of controversies. Donald Trump has come out as a controversial candidate. The 2016 election involves competition between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Apart from the federal government of the United States of America, each state has its own form of government that runs the affairs of the state independently.

The recent speeches by William Jennings, have attracted a lot of attention from the people. The recent growth of Jennings’ Populism is concerning those of us who want the United States to remain true to its beliefs. Populism proposes ideas which on the surface support the lower classes but in reality would undermine our very country.

In 2015 a group of activists made a pilgrimage to Washington D.C. to witness Pope Francis. Within this group of people was a young girl with the name of Sophie Cruz, who served as a link between the immigrant’s rights group of Los Angeles and Pope Francis. According to CBS News the immigration rights group had been preparing for nearly a year (Pelly). In an interview with CBS, Juan Jose Gutierrez said that if Sophie had not been successful in Washington by attracting the attention of the Pope, they would not have not given up there, and would have continued follow the Pope to New York and then Philadelphia (Pelly). They tried to gain the attention of the Pope because he is supported of immigrant, him being one himself. They chose a child of

“Public opinion is formed and expressed by machinery. The newspapers do an immense amount of thinking for the average man and woman. In fact, they supply them with such a continuous stream of standardized opinion, bourne along upon an equally inexhaustible flood of news and sensation, collected from every part of the world every hour of the day, that there is neither the need nor the leisure for personal reflection. All this is but part of a tremendous educating process. It is an education at once universal and superficial. It produces enormous numbers of standardized citizens, all equipped with regulation opinions, prejudices and sentiments according to their class or party.” – Winston S. Churchill

Radical group protests have a negative impact on society. Protestors are filled with many emotions and being a part of a group with strong opinions allowed to chant and protest in public can brings out the worst in people. People begin fight for the different things they believe in and allow hate to take over. Instead of bringing the country together, it can tear the nation apart.

Carlson, Timothy and Katovsky, Bill, _Embedded: The media at war in Iraq_, The Lyons Press, Guilford, 2003.

An important yet under-discussed issue for our time is the media bias. Everyday free speech is broadcasted across the world but with underlying agendas of communication companies. Many broadcasts engage in the assaulting of political candidates or display of tragedies to prompt viewers to believe the media states the exact truth. However, a majority of people do not decipher the tone and mood of the channels and papers which secretly distribute the opinions of the news company rather than solely the news.

Social movements shed light to social issues present in communities and harvest social change in political, religious, educational, health, government, and other institutional matters. Social movements give individuals a clear outlet to concerns about the rights and well-being of themselves and others, mostly through public protest and conversation, in order to promote social justice and democracy. Throughout history, humans naturally ended up starting movements to simply improve their way of life and movements have continually aided in a remarkable change in communities. In the essay “From Civil Rights to Megachurches,” Charles Duhigg explains the three critical steps that initiative successful social movements. Social movements must

This historic event was marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall and with that came the end of a structured way of decision-making for US policy makers (Potter, et al., 2010). This lack of structure was the result of the US no longer having the policy of containment to rely upon for policy direction as they had for the previous 50 years. CNN became more relevant through their ability to deliver coverage globally as they became “a center of gravity” for US foreign policy which caused US foreign policy to become very crisis oriented (Livingston, 2005). This new direction in foreign policy was in large part the result of coverage of the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990’s. During the Persian Gulf War CNN delivered the first live, 24/7 war news coverage and did so exclusively from Baghdad (Gunther, 2001). This live coverage affected not only the general population but the eye of political leaders as well. This was the case because CNN’s coverage allowed for a constant feed of updates on what was occurring on the ground so that people of all levels could stay informed. As stated by former US Congressman Markey, “CNN has provided instantaneous coverage that is watched by everyone from Saddam himself to analysts in the Pentagon (U.S Communications Policy, 1991).” This result not only was evident in the early 1990’s but carried over as this was seen in the 9/11 attacks. While the

Start by narrowing the historical literature down into three main schools of thought so you can take a closer look at how social movements are born, why some succeed, and others fail. (Clearly, using a broad brush to paint a simplified scope of the topic, but this will help to centralize the data in a more digestible context.) The main schools of thought in this paper have been grouped in the following types of action: Collective Action, Economic/Political, and Leadership Centered.

In August of 2002, the Bush administration’s position about Iraq had changed significantly. Prior to this point, the United States and other western countries had been arming Iraq with weapons of every type. The fact the United States and other countries had been arming Iraq with weapons, shows how little they considered Iraq to be a threat. This quickly changed. A debate on invading Iraq, held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, created

Agenda-setting is one of the most important factors in shaping public opinion. Agenda-setting can be defined as the ability of the media to direct public attentions toward the issues they believe are important to the public. But whose choice is it that determines which issues are more important over others? The news media can set an agenda-setting by focus attention on selected issues on which the public will form opinions from (McCombs). The media can paint a memory in your head by repeatedly repeating the issues on different media sources as Internet, network televisions, newspapers, etc. Since these sources are the cheapest and easiest to access, the information can be view by vast number of audiences. As quoted in a 1922 classic called “Public Opinion” by Walter Lippmann,

Too often, people do not question or challenge the views media presents to us and simply accept the views at face value. Politicians rely on this during campaign elections. The popularity of negative advertisements depreciating opposition parties has grown tremendously over the years because they are often successful. The public embraces the negative media messages, then votes accordingly. Oftentimes, people do not even know they have been acted-upon by the media.