From bias to coverage: What explains how news organizations treat social movements

Amenta, Edwin; Elliott, Thomas; Shortt, Nicole; Tierney, Amber Celina; Türkoğlu, Didem; Vann, Burrel

doi:10.1111/soc4.12460

Cited by 27 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…The unions’ engagement with assertive action and electoral politics during the second wave of mobilisation (2007–2008) was the reasons behind the increased coverage of the unions on tuition policy. Social movement scholars who study media coverage find that elections usually dwarf the coverage of social movement activities (Amenta et al, 2017). This might partially explain the decrease in the coverage of student collective action, but the increase in the coverage of union activities becomes more significant under these circumstances.…”

Section: Student–labour Alliancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

Türkoğlu

2019

Current Sociology

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Students have a long history of protesting the introduction or rise of tuition fees. However, political parties do not often endorse their demands. Even the centre-left, which is known for its redistributive policies, does not necessarily ally itself with the student opposition to fees. In this article, the author focuses on the impact of social movement–organised labour alliances on the opposition of political parties to government policy. The author argues that such alliances have a unique impact on centre-left parties, especially in relation to non-labour issues. Two examples of this alliance are presented, emerging from the quite different political contexts of Germany and Turkey. In Germany, student movements failed to block the introduction of tuition fees in 2006. However, in 2008–2011, after students established a deeper alliance with organised labour, tuition fees were scrapped. In Turkey, student movements had been protesting tuition fees for a quarter of a century before an alliance with labour gained the support of social democrats in 2011. These case studies suggest that labour–movement alliances are effective in shifting social democratic politics in higher education policy because of labour’s experience and know-how in alliance building with centre-left parties and the student mobilisation’s potential to make tuition fees an electoral issue cross-cutting party allegiances. This finding suggests that scholars need to take the degree of engagement in opposition alliances into account, in addition to union density, in order to more accurately measure the political power of organised labour. This point has implications for analysing a variety of policy outcomes in policy areas exposed to permanent austerity measures.

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Section: Student–labour Alliancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

Türkoğlu

2019

Current Sociology

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“…Social movements are collective challenges to the status quo – efforts to change the existing power structure through sustained and collective actions with elites, adversaries, and authorities (Beckwith, 2007; McCarthy and Zald, 1977). Historically, social movements have depended, in part, on the mass media for their success, because it is through forms of mass media that social movements can communicate their message beyond their immediate audience, gain supporters, and influence the political and social agenda (Amenta et al , 2017; Oliver and Myers, 1999; Smith et al , 2001). Thus, organizers and members of a social movement often develop strategies, including boycotts, rallies, or protests to attract the attention of the news media.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

News media and the racialization of protest: an analysis of Black Lives Matter articles

Leopold

Bell

2017

EDI

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in seven US-based newspapers to determine whether the protest paradigm, “a pattern of news coverage that expresses disapproval toward protests and dissent,” and other marginalizing techniques are present, and racialized. Design/methodology/approach Relevant articles published during a six-month period of 2014 near the death of Michael Brown were retrieved from the selected outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the St Louis Post-Dispatch. Textual and content analyses were performed. Findings The articles heavily followed the paradigm. An additional characteristic, blame attribution, was also identified. Language of crime, lawlessness, violence, blame for nearby acts of violence, and inflammatory quotes from bystanders and official sources were often present. There was little discussion of key issues associated with the formation of BLM. Research limitations/implications Mainstream outlets rather than social media or alternative outlets were examined. Future research should study coverage of BLM in other outlets. Practical implications Measures to avoid marginalizing protests and racialization of coverage, including increased diversity in the newsroom and monitoring for racialized language are suggested. Social implications Racialization of news and coverage of BLM has widespread negative consequences, such as association of Blacks with criminality that may affect their quality of life. The protest paradigm has the ability to squelch participation in social movements, which have the possibility to bring about needed social change. Originality/value This interdisciplinary paper highlights the important role of mainstream media and news routines in affecting the BLM movement. It uses diversity research to make recommendations for media practitioners to avoid racialization of news.

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“…As already discussed, it is well known that protest event data is subject to selection bias (Amenta et al, 2017;Earl et al, 2004;Ortiz et al, 2005;Weidmann, 2016). The fact that our sources are news agencies that publish in English leads to specific potential biases.…”

Section: External Validation Of the Datamentioning

confidence: 97%

Protest Event Analysis: Developing a Semiautomated NLP Approach

Lorenzini

Kriesi

Makarov

et al. 2021

American Behavioral Scientist

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Protest event analysis is a key method to study social movements, allowing to systematically analyze protest events over time and space. However, the manual coding of protest events is time-consuming and resource intensive. Recently, advances in automated approaches offer opportunities to code multiple sources and create large data sets that span many countries and years. However, too often the procedures used are not discussed in details and, therefore, researchers have a limited capacity to assess the validity and reliability of the data. In addition, many researchers highlighted biases associated with the study of protest events that are reported in the news. In this study, we ask how social scientists can build on electronic news databases and computational tools to create reliable PEA data that cover a large number of countries over a long period of time. We provide a detailed description our semiautomated approach and we offer an extensive discussion of potential biases associated with the study of protest events identified in international news sources.

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From bias to coverage: What explains how news organizations treat social movements

Cited by 27 publications

References 61 publications

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

News media and the racialization of protest: an analysis of Black Lives Matter articles

Protest Event Analysis: Developing a Semiautomated NLP Approach

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