Add to ORKGCurrent Communication-based social movement theory provides an excellent framework for analyzing social movements at a superficial level, but it neglects to include one important aspect that influences social movements – the culture in which a social movement takes place. The dominant theories used to evaluate social movements are written with a Western, North-American bias and thus are inadequate tools for explaining social movements that occur in other cultures. This work uses a non-Western social movement – China\u27s 1989 Democracy Movement – as a case study to demonstrate the Western bias that Communication-based social movement theory holds, as well as to show the inadequacy of using a Western-based theory to analyze and explain a non...