How the Media Portrays the Occupy Wall Street Movement Essay -- Media,

The fact that media can influence politics is readily evident from the campaign trail, to the passing of laws, to grass roots campaigns such as Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy Wall Street campaign has been portrayed negatively by the mainstream media outlets. Newspapers, radio, television, and the internet have painted the movement with offensive undertones, reporting the lows of the movement rather than the revolutionary aspects of the movement. A possible reason that the media has consistently framed this movement in a negative manner is that the movement is operating against the forces of society. This opposing issue between the rich conservative mass media and the Occupy Wall Street movement has drawn the interest of the public from all walks to life to witness the song and dance being framed against the Occupiers. Who is winning this dance off? An examination of the facts will reveal how well this framing is influencing the political forces. The four forces of socialization, or how an audience, technology, the media industry and the product of the various media outlets react in the social world and the social construction of reality or the power to influence have concentrated on the Occupy Wall Street (Croteau, Hoynes, & Milan, 2012). Audiences have tuned into this movement since the first protest in September of 2011 (Occupy Wall Street, 2011). Protestors have been painted as â€Å"a motley collection of punks, anarchists, socialists, hackers, liberals, and artists† (Scherer, 2011, p. 22). A report by CNN (2011) stereotyped the protestors as hypocrites, because they have recently occupied an office near Wall Street, with a copier and furnishings, instead of the parks they had formerly protested from. An Occupy rep resp... ... that the one percent is thriving, while the rest of America is starving, all because big business controls politics in America (Occupy, 2011). It is too early to call, but in the end if Occupiers lose the competition, at least they danced. Works Cited CNN. (2011). Exclusive: Inside offices of Occupy Wall Street. Retrieved from, http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/01/exclusive-inside-the-offices-of-occupy-wall-street/ Croteau, D., Hoynes, W., & Milan, S. (2012). Media/society (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Occupy Wall Street. (2011). About. Retrieved from, http://occupywallst.org/about/ Scherer, M. (2011). Taking it to the Streets. Time. 178(16). P. 20-24. Tharoor, I., & Rawlings, N. (2011). ‘The whole world is watching’: Occupy Wall Street stares down NYPD. Retrieved from, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2096976,00.html