Blog Post #9

Institutions have several tactics to lessen or stop the efforts of social movements and groups. One of the various ones listed in Persuasion and Social Movements by Stewart, Smith and Denton is the strategy of evasion. Through this strategy, the media will do whatever it can to not acknowledge the social movement at all. In the first paragraph of the subsection in chapter fourteen, it says “little or no media coverage, most americans are unaware [of social movements]”. To elaborate, what this quote means is that the media pretty much airs what it pleases. If a social issue, for example as the sweatshop on given in the textbook, is one that the government wants to keep the same, media will use evasion to keep Americans minds off of the horrible issue of sweatshop working and how inhumane it is. 

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/a-brief-history-of-palestine.html

This link will take you to a short summary of the issue between Israel and Palestine over the past several decades. To sum it up, it has been a war over land and each side has their reasons to fight for it, primarily for religious reasons. The war is brutal and bloody out there, but you hardly EVER see this issue spoken about or produced by the media. There are thousands pro-palestine social groups, such as the Palestine Aid Society that is founded in Washington, D.C. These groups are seldom heard of, because the United States are Israel’s ally, and will not portray them in a bad light.