The Occupy Wall Street Movement Analysis

In 2008, the United States was thrust into a significant financial crisis. At that time, many American households experienced high unemployment rates and dealt with difficulty in making mortgage payments or saw a significant decrease in the value of their home. According to many experts, the cause of this financial crisis was the banking industry’s focus on short term profits at the expense of the average American citizen (Twin). Despite the prominent role that banks had in this financial crisis, many lenders received exemptions in the following years after the financial crisis (White). These exemptions and what was perceived as specialized treatment spurred the creation of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Initially, the Occupy Wall Street
The financial crisis resulted in an unprecedented amount of foreclosures (Levitin). The Occupy Wall Street Movement sought to tap into the raw anger that many people felt towards losing their home or the declining values in their home while banks could bounce back relatively quickly and began recording record profits soon after their taxpayer-backed financial bailout. This movement spoke to many of the ninety-nine percenters that felt that they were shouldering the costs of these bailouts while banks did not have to deal with
Social media was the primary platform used within Occupy Wall Street to encourage others to come out and join the protests. Additionally, social media was the primary way that these organizers of this movement got their message out to the public and to the media. For instance, in 2011, Kalle Lasn, a person that was considered a founder of the Occupy Wall Street movement reached out to Adbusters to increase public attention and protest participation. The selected magazine was an interesting choice because it was an online magazine that billed itself as catering to activists, artists, students, educators, writers and entrepreneurs who believed in the advancement of socialist activist movement within the age of information. The article that was eventually printed on the website read as a call to action for the advocacy of the issues promoted by the Occupy Wall Street movement and challenged its readers to show up and create a gathering of at least twenty thousand people to protest. The hope was that in generating this many people in a single place, the demands of the movement would be taken more seriously. At the time, the focus of the Occupy Wall Street movement was corporate corruptions and the fact that democratic principles were being trampled in favor of “corporatocracy.” In addition to using established online magazines and social media platforms, the Occupy Wall Street movement also created a