Why does it seem the majority of protests in the US are to oppose something while so many protests in other countries are looking to influence improving something?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨11111one11111@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I want tonpreface that I use exclusively Lemmy for my source for all news. I have no real social media accounts, will never be caught dead watching network or local news on TV (idc if im 37 its cartoons of gtfo lol). I use duckduckgo, Firefox for search and browser ever since I was tasked at work to keep a pulse on seo rankings. Id give cancer permission take my testicles befor ingive any fuckin company’s ai permission to my data. If any of my hardware or software is using “AI” it is not at the front end or a configurable setting. What I’m building to is that I feel I put in more effort than most to not have the news I am fed influenced by anything more than what is happening in the world right now and the decisions news outlets make to report on.

Now we have that established, I can elaborate on my question. When I see reports of protesting in the US (live outside of Buffalo, NY obligatory Go Bills!), I see primarily protests in opposition to an event or thing. I get the literal definition of protest, I’m speaking of the mission people are protesting under. Protesting police brutality, protesting oil line, fuck the insurection that doesnt fall under this example but there have been other actual protests against election results (see Buffalo ~~shithead~~ I mean mayor, Byron Brown’s most recent election).

Why are the so few:

Protest for improved living conditions. Protesting for higher wages (ok I admit I forgot about this one till now. I do see unions protesting for this) Protesting for lower tuition costs. Not loan forgiveness but legitimate improvements to the corrupt financial structure allowing shit like Alabama’s highest paid public office position is Nick fuckin Sabin. Protest for better medical billing regulations.

Is it just the way news headlines and articles are written domestically vs globally? Is it a vernacular thing where US English grammatical structure dictates a protest must be against and never for? Or is it cultural thing where American laziness has evolved into something horrible needs to happen for action to happen (We don’t become known as one of the fattest countries thanks our love of working hard). On the same note different page, is it that protest I see for better living conditions don’t have the luxury to protest against something? Whether it be a question of freedom of speech, governing corruption or other similar issues.

ORRRRR do you think I am off base here and there actually isn’t a difference between domestic and other counties protests?

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Comments

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KoboldCoterie@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s all just framing, no? You could frame all of your examples of protesting to “improve something” as protesting against something, and vice versa.

Protesting for improved living conditions is just protesting against poor living conditions. Protesting for higher wages is protesting against low wages. Protesting for lower tuition costs is protesting against high tuition.

Protests by definition are an action objecting to a thing. What are you seeing happen in other countries that’s so different to what’s happening here, when you don’t selectively frame it as “for” a cause rather than “against” a thing?

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- 11111one11111@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I get the framing thing but that isn’t addressing why US protests are: something bad is happening -> protest And other countries seem to be more of a collective agreement that something needs to improve.
  
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  - partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’m agreeing with @KoboldCoterie@pawb.social that it sounds like this is just a framing thing.
    
    Example:
    
    Problem framing = “The rent is too, damn high!”
    
    Improvement framing = “Cost of rent needs to be made more affordable for renters”
    
    Those are saying the same thing, but one is framed as a problem while the other is framed as an improvement is needed.
    
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  - jbrains@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Why do things need to improve, generally speaking?
    
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- JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I agree. There were protests nearby for improving the situation in Palestine/Gaza, but you could argue those protests were just as much against giving more aid to Israel.
  
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  - master5o1@lemmy.nz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Even the phrase “improving the situation in Gaza” can be ambiguous.
    
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orcrist@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think you’re just framing issues to match the claim you’re making. For example, an anti-bad-cop protest could be “protesting against cops violating civil rights” or just as well “protesting to bring justice to the victim’s family”. The former is a negative, the latter is a positive.

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pugsnroses77@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Have you seen what the French do when politicians suggest something they dont like?

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- Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Nothing actually. As can be seen with the current situation.
  
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Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Have you SEEN what our politicians are trying to push on us???

We say no.

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almar_quigley@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Reading OP’s comments it sounds like they are getting at in America, from their perspective, protests don’t start until things are really bad, while in the EU protests, again in their perspective, are more proactive or at the early stages of things going wrong.

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jbrains@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
As for the difference, there’s a lot more Learned Helplessness in the Republic of Gilead than there is in, say, northern Europe. 🤷‍♂️

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lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is solely a hypothesis, and it’s backed by informal and subjective impressions, but:

Anglos are specially prone to fall for nirvana fallacy, where a solution is discarded as useless because it is not complete or perfect. That might encourage them to frame the problems in a negative way, as it won’t beg the question “what’s your proposed solution?”, thus being easier to gather agreement and support.

If that hypothesis is correct, I predict that English speakers in Canada should follow a similar pattern as the ones in USA, while the French speakers would follow a pattern more similar to Europe and/or the rest of Latin America.

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