Social movement
Social movements are large groupings made of people who organize themselves to resist or promote social changes. Basically, social movements are made of two components; first is what or whom the movement is trying to change and second is the level of change the movement is advocating for. Social movements can occur both at the societal and individual level and the movements can advocate for either radical or minor change (Anyon, 2014, 21). There is a big connection between social movements and political parties, interest groups and the media. Interest groups such as workers groups are a big part of the social movement as they advocate for social changes that are of interest to their members. Political parties are also greatly involved in social movement through seeking to bring about political change. The media has great potential to bring about social changes through creating awareness and informing the society about different issues that are of concern to them (Johnston, 2013, 43).
There are three models of analyzing social movements. These include framing (frame analysis), resource mobilization and stage of the social movement. The main weakness of using frame analysis is that only looks at the shared experience of the participants of the social movement rather than looking at a holistic picture of progress made by the movements. As for resource mobilization, the major weakness is that the method only looks at how movement mobilizes their resources in order to bring about change. The stage of the social movement as a model of analysis only looks at a historical perspective of the period in time in which the social movement is active (Goodwin and Jasper, 2014, 45).
Social movements achieve success when they bring about the desired changes or when they are able to resist social changes that they deem unfavorable. The movements may achieve their goals under various conditions such as political or sociocultural settings. They do this by influencing political changes in ideology and policy as well as influencing the society’s culture