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Ideally, a media system suitable for a democracy ought to provide its readers with some coherent sense of the broader social forces that affect the con ditions of their everyday lives. It is difficult to find anyone who would claim that media discourse in the United States even remotely approaches this ideal. The overwhelming conclusion is that the media generally operate in ways that promote apathy, cynicism, and quiescence, rather than active citizenship and participation. Furthermore, all the trends seem to be in the wrong direction toward more and more messages, from fewer and bigger producers, saying less and less. That's the bad news.The good news is that the messages provide a many-voiced, open text that can and often is read oppositionally, at least in part. Television imagery is a site of struggle where the powers that be are often forced to compete and defend what they would prefer to have taken for granted. The un derdetermined nature of media discourse allows plenty of room for challeng ers such as social movements to offer competing constructions of reality and to find support for them from readers whose daily lives may lead them to construct meaning in ways that go beyond media imagery.

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In this article, some organizing principles and hypotheses are offered concerning the ways in which social movements interact with the news media and the outcomes for both parties. The structural part of the analysis focuses attention on the power and dependency aspects of the relationship and the consequences of the asymmetries. The cultural part focuses attention on the more subtle contest over meaning. Hypotheses on how social movement characteristics affect media coverage focus on movement standing, preferred framing, and sympathy. The authors argue for the importance of organization, professionalism, and strategic planning and for the benefits of a division of labor among movement actors. Hypotheses on how media characteristics affect movement outcomes focus on leadership, action strategy, and framing strategy. The authors argue for audience size, emphasis on the visual, and emphasis on entertainment values as influencing movements.

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