Black Lives Matter: An Activist Movement Analysis

Activism serves to bring about social or political change; however, the success of an activist movement is largely determined by its interpretation by the public and the media. Black Lives Matter, an activist movement that seeks to end violence and racism towards black people, has adopted an idea which the majority of the United States should be able to get behind. For the most part, people tend to agree that nobody should die because of the color of their skin; however, when certain protests and rallies are covered in a negative light, public support for Black Lives Matter becomes deeply divided.
Black Lives Matter is an interesting activist movement in that it began as a twitter hashtag after the Trayvon Martin case which saw George Zimmerman acquitted of all charges and grew to an international movement. I want to tackle the media representation of Black Lives Matter and explore the ways in which this representation has affected the reputation of this movement. I would like to examine multiple reports on a few select demonstrations by Black Lives Matter and …show more content…
Furthermore, I will read personal statements made by people close to the demonstrations when such material is available in order to get the most complete picture possible. The questions I want to answer in my paper are primarily concerning what Black Lives Matter seeks to accomplish. I want to know what their mission is, and I want to know how they plan to accomplish it. Moreover, I would like to collect as much information about the group’s organization as possible; with such a massive following, I would like to know how Black Lives Matter organizes their demonstrations and how their organization deals with the negative image from the