job movement

Have you ever been asked to tweet, friend, like, or donate online for a cause? Perhaps you have 'liked' a local nonprofit on Facebook, prompted by one of your friends liking it, too. Nowadays social movements are woven throughout our social media activities. Although many of the past and present social movements around the world differ from each other in many ways, they all generally go through a life cycle marked by the progressive stages of emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline. In this lesson, we will discuss the four stages of social movements.

A social movement is not necessarily a political party or interest group, nor is it a mass fad or trend. Instead they are somewhere in between. They are defined as a group of people with a common ideology who try together to achieve certain general goals. Some characteristics of social movements are that they are involved in conflicts with clearly identified opponents, and they share a collective identity. Their goals can either be aimed at a specific policy or more broadly aimed at cultural change.

Stage 1: Emergence

Social movements start when people realize that there is a specific problem in their society that they want to address. This realization can come from the dissatisfaction people feel or information and knowledge they get about a specific issue. At the first stage, the social movement defines the problem it is going to address.

The first stage of the social movement is known as emergence. Within this stage, social movements are very preliminary, and there is little to no organization. Potential movement participants may be unhappy with some policy or some social condition, but they have not yet taken any action in order to redress their grievances, or, if they have, it is most likely individual action rather than collective action. For example, a person may comment to family that he or she is dissatisfied with a particular issue.

Have you ever been asked to tweet, friend, like, or donate online for a cause? Perhaps you have 'liked' a local nonprofit on Facebook, prompted by one of your friends liking it, too. Nowadays social movements are woven throughout our social media activities. Although many of the past and present social movements around the world differ from each other in many ways, they all generally go through a life cycle marked by the progressive stages of emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline. In this lesson, we will discuss the four stages of social movements.

A social movement is not necessarily a political party or interest group, nor is it a mass fad or trend. Instead they are somewhere in between. They are defined as a group of people with a common ideology who try together to achieve certain general goals. Some characteristics of social movements are that they are involved in conflicts with clearly identified opponents, and they share a collective identity. Their goals can either be aimed at a specific policy or more broadly aimed at cultural change.

Stage 1: Emergence

Social movements start when people realize that there is a specific problem in their society that they want to address. This realization can come from the dissatisfaction people feel or information and knowledge they get about a specific issue. At the first stage, the social movement defines the problem it is going to address.

The first stage of the social movement is known as emergence. Within this stage, social movements are very preliminary, and there is little to no organization. Potential movement participants may be unhappy with some policy or some social condition, but they have not yet taken any action in order to redress their grievances, or, if they have, it is most likely individual action rather than collective action. For example, a person may comment to family that he or she is dissatisfied with a particular issue.