A protest’s media success can diverge from its organizers’ goals

Evidence

Nina responded. “Don’t do anything at all, Mayara. Grab a beer and relax and watch because we are blowing up on every news channel in the world. You don’t need to do anything. We already did it.” Mayara couldn’t believe it. How could this be success? People were bleeding and wounded all around her. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 393

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with the earlier point that a single viral image converted bystanders: here the image succeeds beyond the organizers’ own understanding of success. — connects to: Well-planned protest spectacles can dictate front-page coverage — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 369; Expanded protest crowds can blunt original organizers’ political messaging. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 409; Protest movements should be judged against their own stated goals — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 57 (+15 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: Tightly captures a core tension of the protest decade: organizers planning for substantive change find their intervention recursively absorbed by the attention economy of media virality, which has its own measure of ‘success.‘

Broader Connections

• Events lacking significance can be magnified by the media. #qualifies (0.75) — Cohen, Stanley, Folk devils and moral panics, 221