Blog Post 9

Evasion is a strategy used to stop social movements from achieving their goals. One method of doing this is through the media. The media has control of what gets out to the public and many wealthy people and companies control the media. The media chooses not to talk about certain social movements and by doing so they are denying them any coverage. Without any coverage from the media the social movement will not be able to spread their message to large audience like they would like to do so. The media is one method of evading of social movements and stopping them from achieving their goals. Another method of evasion is invisibility within institutions. This is when authority just decides not to recognize the social movement and doesn’t meet their requests. For example not giving them permits to do parades. By being invisible to authority and not getting recognition they have a hard time being able to convey messages to audiences. This also denies the social movement legitimization that the movement is hoping to gain. These are both methods of evasion that try to stop social movements from achieving their goals.

            An example of evasion could be the hacker group Anonymous. They don’t get media coverage because many of the large media companies don’t want them to get coverage. The media tries to downplay them and they don’t get as much media coverage as other things that may not be as controversial.  The media doesn’t give them coverage but the group Anonymous counteracts its by hacking into their newscasts. This is an example of evasion through media, which doesn’t work, as the media would like it to. When the group Anonymous hacks into the media newscasts they gain legitimacy and the evasion tactic the media is trying to do fails. This is an example of media tried to deny a group coverage but fails to do so.