Breaking down the question
This ten-mark question invites a qualified judgement. It asks whether social movements are caused by opportunity structures generated by media, and the closing why demands that you justify your position with reasoning. The key is to recognise the two theoretical terms embedded in the question — opportunity structures and media — and to avoid the trap of a simple agreement. Media may enable and shape movements, but to say it causes them overstates the case.
The phrasing borrows from the political opportunity structure tradition, so the examiner is testing whether you can engage that framework critically rather than accept a media-centric explanation wholesale.
How to approach it
Define political opportunity structure and note that classically it refers to the openings in the political system — shifts in alignments, divided elites, expanding rights — not to media alone. Then acknowledge the genuine and growing role of media, especially digital media, in generating perceived openings and lowering the cost of mobilisation. Finally, offer a balanced verdict: media is an increasingly important enabling and shaping condition, but grievances, resources and organisation remain the deeper causes.
Model answer
The claim can be accepted only in part. The concept of opportunity structure, developed within the political process tradition and associated with Sidney Tarrow, holds that movements arise when the political environment offers openings — divisions among elites, shifting alignments, the loosening of repression, or the availability of influential allies. In its original form, the opportunity structure is political rather than mediated, so to attribute movements primarily to media is to narrow the concept considerably.
That said, media has become a genuine generator of opportunity in its own right. Media coverage can transform a local grievance into a national issue, confer legitimacy on protesters, publicise the vulnerability of authorities, and signal to potential participants that others share their discontent. Manuel Castells has argued that networked digital media create new spaces of autonomous communication in which movements can form rapidly and coordinate at low cost. Contemporary Indian mobilisations — from anti-corruption agitations to campaigns against gender violence — have drawn heavily on television and social media to expand their reach and pace. In this sense media does help generate the perceived openings, or opportunity structures, within which movements act.
Yet media cannot be treated as the cause. Movements still require underlying grievances, shared identities, resources and organisation to sustain themselves, as resource mobilisation theory emphasises. Media may amplify and accelerate, but it does not manufacture discontent where none exists, and movements that lack organisational depth often dissipate once coverage fades. The relation between identity, mobilisation and organised assertion is developed further in the notes on ethnicity and identity movements.
The balanced conclusion, then, is that media increasingly shapes and enables the opportunity structures within which social movements emerge, but it is a facilitating condition rather than the fundamental cause, which lies in grievance, identity and organisation.
Examiner's perspective
For a ten-mark answer, examiners reward precision and a clear stance. The best scripts define opportunity structure accurately, credit media as a real and growing enabling force with contemporary examples, and then resist the overstatement in the question by insisting that grievance, resources and organisation are the deeper causes. Naming Tarrow and Castells signals theoretical command, and a crisp, reasoned conclusion answering the why directly is what distinguishes a top response.