by Mao Shibata

In these times of globalization, social movements become not only domestic movement but also international and world-wide movements. For instance, the Arab Spring that originally occurred in Tunisia and spreading throughout Arab world is one of the largest revolutionary waves of demonstration, protest, and war, which began on 18 December 2010 remain vivid in most people’s memory. Social movements collect particular people to appeal particular thinking or idea, and moreover, people are organized as unity using their social networks and attempt to change or promote their society and politics. To achieve their goals, framing is essential for every social movements.

Framing enable to integrate people together and determine their direction of movements. Furthermore, social movements can incorporate more groups with a broader range of goals and great influence on popularity and public policy.

When I watched the movement against nuclear power plants in Hukushima, I was so impressed and I understood the relation between framing and social movements. I know the concepts of both framing and social movement, however, I was a little bit confused how do they impact on mutually. In the movie, women in Hukushima stood up and started to take action as they want to protect all of their children who live in radiation exposure area and moreover, they feel anger with the government who did not deal with nuclear problem seriously and sincerely. These are the framing. That’s why they decided to take action as social movements. They are now organizing social movement against nuclear plants to attain their goal that abolish the nuclear plants and turn other-not only media but also all citizens- attention to them.

However, social movements sometimes compete with each other and they miss their purpose or goal. What they need is to keep less abstract and more personal and not to focus on only one frame. We usually carry around multiple frames in our head and every people grasp affairs in difference ways. Keep thinking for example, what framing being more successful? Do people convey any clear consisting frame? And carrying on effort to reframe and considering solution lead to achieve their real goal. Social movements act to change political debates, governmental institution and wider culture under their own purpose. Sometime there are some obstacles that are put in their way such as government, police, media or their opposition campaign and it is really difficult to convey their goal to entire world, though they try to promote awareness and action that extends beyond the boundaries of one movement or campaign by pressing and carrying images and words.