Covering Protests on Twitter: The Influences on Journalists’ Social Media Portrayals of Left- and Right-Leaning Demonstrations in Brazil

Abstract

This study uses a media sociology approach to untangle how multiple influences shape the way journalists cover left- and right-leaning protests on social media. Several studies have investigated how reporters portray social movements, finding that news marginalizes protestors by focusing on spectacle and violent tactics to the detriment of their ideas. In this study, we turn to journalists’ Twitter accounts to analyze if these patterns are transferred to social media, as predicted by the literature on normalization of new affordances. Through a mixed methodology matching survey and social media data from 466 Brazilian journalists who tweeted about protests in 2013 and 2015, results revealed individual attitudes predicted coverage, indicating that social media was a space for personal, not professional, expression. Contrary to the literature, findings show that social media portrayals were more legitimizing during the left-leaning demonstrations than during the right-leaning elite-driven one. As a result, marginalizing patterns of protest coverage were challenged, not replicated, on Twitter. These findings suggest a limitation of the theory of normalization to explain how global journalists use social media.

Is the Whole World Watching? Building a Typology of Protest Coverage on Social Media From Around the World

“…Type of protest and location of protest in particular have bearing on the nature of media coverage. Mourão and Chen (2019) examined left-and right-leaning protests in 2013 and 2015, respectively, in Brazil, and found journalists were more critical of the rightist protests, contradicting previous literature that would suggest more favorable coverage. Boyle and colleagues' (2004) found that war-related protests adhered to the paradigm more closely than protests related to social or labor issues.…”

The Promoter, Celebrity, and Joker Roles in Journalists’ Social Media Performance

“…Indeed, social media platforms have become important spaces for the performance of humor (Shiffman, 2007). Holton and Lewis (2011) and Mourão and Chen (2019) argue that humorous messages may help journalists to connect and interact with the audience.…”

“…While humor is a central feature of popular culture and everyday life, and while comedy may take on different humorous genres, people differ significantly in what they think is funny or not funny. Humor means different things from culture to culture (Mintz, 2008), making it difficult to know if something is funny for everyone (Holton & Lewis, 2011;Mourão & Chen, 2019). Moreover, humor is situationally dependent, so what is perceived as humorous in one moment may seem not very funny in another (Meyer, 2000) even if it is shared within a common environment (Fry, 2010).…”

Bounded or Boundless: A Case Study of Foreign Correspondents’ Use of Twitter During the 2019 Hong Kong Protests

“…As mentioned above, social media platforms, by providing information that is not available on mainstream media, serve as sourcing and reporting tools for journalists while covering protests (Hermida et al, 2014;Veenstra et al, 2014). Of particular note, social media has emerged as a networked space in which activists and journalists can connect during times of social unrest (Mourão & Chen, 2020;Poell & Rajagopalan, 2015). On social media, foreign correspondents can offer unique perspectives, personal perceptions, and feelings on protests not otherwise available in their published news stories through media outlets.…”

“…Yet, the shifting media landscape and macroenvironment have led to greater diversity in media representations of protests, which challenges the protest paradigm (Lee, 2014;Papaioannou, 2015). What deserves close attention is that social media provides an indispensable venue for journalists, bystanders, and protesters to not only disseminate information and also interact with one another (Harlow & Johnson, 2011;Ismail et al, 2019;Mourão & Chen, 2020). Although most studies in this vein focus on how journalists tweeted domestic protests (Mourão & Chen, 2020) or protests happened aboard (Harlow & Johnson, 2011), it is little known how foreign correspondents who are physically in the place where the protest burst out use Twitter and its implications on engagement.…”