Blog Post 9

One overarching strategy institutions use to keep social movements from achieving their desired change is counter-persuasion, and within that strategy, institutions reveal true motives and denigrate the opposition. For example, in the Occupy Wall Street social movement, the institution of the media denigrated the opposition, on many different official news reports. In a CNN news report that covered the protest, anchor Erin Burnett denigrated the opposition by mocking the protesters, calling them hippies and undermining their goals, stating that no one, including the protesters, understand what exigence the social movement is fighting. In a Fox news report, anchor Bill O’ Reilly mocked the protesters by saying that they were lazy, and the reason behind the high number of unemployment in the protestors is their own fault. He undermined an exigence of the movement, being unemployment, by stating that all the protesters have to do to acquire jobs is take a shower and get a college degree, despite the majority of the protestors being college graduates. He also mocked the exigence of the social movement by stating that the people are not protesting for anything noble or even important, like students protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The two anchors also showed the tactic of revealing true motives, being that young, unemployed college graduates are protesting not because there is anything wrong with the economic system, but because they are simply too lazy to get jobs. Even politician Herman Cain said in an interview about the social movement that the protestors are solely responsible for themselves not being rich. This is an example of how another institution, such as the government, also denigrates the opposition, being protestors wanting to change the economic system. What Herman Cain said is also an example of revealing true motives, in the sense that he was stating that the protestors were responsible for not being rich, and mocking them for protesting something that is their own faults.

Bill O’ Reilly report and Herman Cain interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UILvHyvCkAg

Erin Burnett report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCiAG7LF7Q4