There have been countless mass/collective movements throughout our history, one of the most recent being Occupy Wall Street. Citizens involved in this movement are protesting the present conditions in which 1% of the population, namely the wealthiest individuals, hold all of the power, while the other 99% hold no power in today’s world. The formation of this mass behavior cannot be attributed to random occurrence, but rather, there are sociological explanations for why individuals feel compelled to take part in these collective actions, and how these collective actions grow as a whole.
As discussed in Robert Jay Lifton’s article, Nazi Doctors at Auschwitz, which explores the reasons to why ordinary individuals partook in the Auschwitz Holocaust practices, there is a “‘coherent community’ and ‘common effort’…in discussing…commitment to overcoming staggering national problems” (Lifton, 441). Thus, individuals who share a generalized belief, or a belief about what needs to be changed, feel compelled to join together to fight for what they believe in (Smelser). Also, mass hysteria causes individuals to lose their inhibitions. In other words, those who may not normally protest on their own, feel more comfortable doing so in a group because their individual actions are incorporated into a larger system.
It may seem plausible to think that a large group, like the Occupy Wall Street group, will always have an effect on social order; however, other factors must be considered. A collective group must have structural conduciveness, or avenues available for change, in order to work effectively (Smelser). Also, one must consider the action of social control, or which people have social control (Smelser). Although Occupy Wall Street has conducted expansive protests, these actions have not been given the attention, especially by the media, needed to make a worldwide statement, thus limiting their avenues for change. This lack of media attention demonstrates the concept of action of social control. The 1% of the population that Occupy Wall Street participants are protesting against are the same people that mediate media coverage, thus if they wish for this protest to be silenced and ignored by the media, they have control over that. Even if media coverage is given, the people with social control (1% of the population) can dictate how this mass movement is depicted in media. Thus, a shared belief among individuals, social order, resource availability, etc… all has an effect on the magnitude of mass behavior.
