The Whole World is Watching: The Media and the Unmaking of the New LeftTodd Gitlin

SDS and FramingFactors Shaping Media Framing1) Cover events, not causes2) Person, not groups3) Conflict, not consensusNorms of Covering Deviant Behavior: Crime StorySM is treated as a collective criminal act.

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Media Actively Engaged SDS (302)

Engaged: Use Media to Promote Anti-War messageDisengage: Is it an option?

SDS: Changes in MembershipPrairie Power v. Old Guard: DifferencesOld Guard: NE, Ivy League, more intell., longer history of activism Prairie Power: Mid-west, younger, state universities, newer to radicalism

Media and SplitThe media, rather than SDS itself, began to define the group to its own disparate offices and chapters.

Celebrity as Career or StrategyCelebrity as Career: Performing: Jerry Rubin (303)

1) Appearance Before HUACRubin as a Political Figure: Leaders without a RealFollowing He was driven to the media when his own base abandoned him: His ego took over.YIP: Youth International PartyIt was a much a media fiction, or creation than a political movement. In 1968, they nominated a pig.

Celebrity as Career or StrategyChicago Seven: Court as CircusWhy Did The Press Follow Rubin and Hoffman?Answer: They were colorful and symbolicRubin: Political TheoryRubin had a theory of revolution. He believed his self-dramatizations, and the spectacular events they accompanied, mobilized oppositional consciousness and revolutionary action.

Celebrity as Career or StrategyReplicated Media Own Methodology: Turn Audience into Whatever is Being Portrayed Chicago as Myth: Images of New Left Defiance It was copied in other cities, everyone wanted to be part of the media image of Chicago. New Left of late 1960s and 1970s informed by media images of FSM, SDS.

Example: SLA

New Left and the MediaMedia and the New Left: Free Speech Movement

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

SDS and the MediaMedia and SDS: Chicago

Celebrity as Career or StrategyCelebrity as Trap: Abdicating (307)Leaders abdicated, because they found themselves caught between being an activist/spokesperson and a celebrity. Examples:Mario SavioBob Moses

Celebrity as Career or StrategyAlternatives for Leadership: (308)Structural weaknesses of the New Left prevented the movement from being able to tactically handle the media. SM with more coherent policies, have less free flying leaders.

Implications for MovementsImplications for Movements (308)How should or can SM deal with nexus of media and corporate interests? Hegemony: How are SM Co-Opted?

Environmental and Consumer Rights GroupsMedia and ActivismActivists have become stock characters.

Implications for MovementsSummary: Analysis of SDSBecame dependent on Media Because: 1) It had a narrow social base: students2) Had a broader policy goal: end the war

Chicago: 1968http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l4n5uw_GFM&feature=related

Chicago: 1968http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l4n5uw_GFM&feature=related

Chicago Pictures: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2009-06/47534772.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-090617-days-of-rage-pictures,0,4678644.photogallery&usg=__BMHYCWLsUjEh4kHxOvBrTk8109A=&h=322&w=500&sz=57&hl=en&start=13&um=1&tbnid=n87jGat-fmuowM:&tbnh=84&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dchicago%2B1968%2B%252B%2Bpolice%2Battacks%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26um%3D1

****************************