media and social movements

What inspired me most while watching the documentary on the journalism students' trip to South Africa was the nation's praise of its media on mobilizing a health agenda. Our major global events often focus on violence, as I blogged about earlier, and attention on prevention and treatments rather then merely events was inspiring to see. It's not often the media is praised.

I looked for more information on social movements supported by media and found this link:

http://www.stwr.org/the-un-people-politics/mass-media-and-social-movements.html

The article discusses the importance of media in drawing attention to and facilitating social movements and also the damaging effects it can have if covering the movement in a biased way.

The article also lines up nicely with what Thussu spoke about in his article about media/cultural imperialism and what Hardt spoke about in terms of democracy.

"media in the West are powerful corporate actors themselves and are staunch defenders of the status quo, and their interests are one and the same as those of transnational capitalism. [37] Consequently, it is readily apparent that Western media systems are not fulfilling their democratic role within Western societies, and are in fact acting instead in ways that work to undermine popularly understood conceptions of democracy. In the light of this information, social movement activists need to start seriously thinking about how they might improve the (often anti-democratic) mainstream media they are forced to operate within"