Media-created reputations recruit members to a movement that doesn’t actually exist

Evidence

SDS was flooded with new members, allowing it to grow at a rate of 300 percent in a single year. But these new arrivals did not want to join SDS—they wanted to join the organization they had read about in the newspaper, which didn’t actually exist. They showed up with longer hair, less ideological commitments, and a strange set of assumptions about the organization. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 74

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the broader book thesis about mass protest being co-opted or distorted; relates to Gitlin’s analysis and to the general problem of media representation inflating movements. — connects to: Social media prominence did not track real-world influence in protest movements. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 299; Online activism for the Syrian opposition was built on fabricated personas — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 307; Media coverage can bestow a movement more reach than its own organizing ever could — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 73 (+2 more)
• STORYSTEM: The image of thousands joining an organization that only exists as a news narrative could seed a story about a movement, club, or religion whose real members are vastly outnumbered by people committed to its imagined version.

Broader Connections

• Media-created reputations attract members who join a fictional version of a movement #corroborates (1.00) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 74
• Media coverage can create organizations that outstrip their actual membership #expands (0.85) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 73