Blog Post 9

In the fourteenth and final chapter of Persuasion and Social Movements, the texts focus on the strategies to resist social movements. The four main strategies are evasion, counter position, coercive persuasion, and adjustment. Each of these strategies is used by institutions when facing resistance movements. Although most social movements have each institution using more than one strategy, in the case of the social issue I am focusing on for the final project, adjustment would be the most efficient.

The strategy of adjustment is when institutions “adapt, modify, or alter their structures, goals, and personnel...in response to the agitators’ demands.” Adjustment is normally the last strategy institutions turn to, but at the end, I believe it is the most effective. Obviously companies don’t want to admit their flaws or change anything about themselves, which is why adjustment is the last thing they want to do. However, if they adjust little things and possibly not even permanently, many social movements will begin to die down and not focus on the issue as much as they did before the institutes began cooperating.

In the case of my focus movement, the effect social media has on eating disorders, many institutions have created campaigns to please the resistance. Many companies have started “true beauty” campaigns, stating that their first goal is to bring out natural beauty or many clothing companies have created plus size campaigns. The issue with these campaigns is that there are still debates over what is “plus sized”. There have been countless of cases that companies have claimed that their size 6 model is plus sized, while the public would argue that a women at size 6 would never be considered plus sized, thus causing girls looking at the magazine to feel ugly and fat if they happen to be over a size 6 or near there.