The Social Movement: The Black Lives Matter Movement

The Black Lives Matter movement shows change as achievable for the internal audience composed of many organizations, while grabbing the attention of the external audience who is unaware or uninvolved with the movement. The internal audience asserts their own identity as people who want to stop violence against black people, as the external audience is just beginning to understand it. The external group of diverse cultures is not closely connected with movement, which creates problems on the dominant cultures who identify with the cause. The existence of both types of audience creates problems for the advocates by providing content that may be interesting to the internal audience, but unappealing or irrelevant to the external audience. The social movement focuses on the internal audience as the movement’s target audience, which makes it harder

Since the audience is sympathetic to the cause, the strategy is more effective. Creating guilt of false equality shames the audience into taking action in the cause. The rhetor can threaten the audience with violence by stating that if nothing changes, violence will come to their homes. Presenting an implicit threat to the audience’s personal space can convince them to create change. The strategy successfully functions as a way to threaten the external audience, and persuades them to join the cause. Civil disobedience can be used by protesting in front of a state building to demand the government to enact change in the security of citizens, demanding equal treatment and protection of all cultures. The rhetor uses civil disobedience by standing their ground to protest and accepts their punishment, creating a stronger message of how serious they are. The strategy functions as a way to get the attention of the larger society, through media coverage and word of