‘Have a Quiet, Orderly, Polite Revolution’: Framing Political Protest and Protecting the Status Quo

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how print media sources frame the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street in ways that, consciously or not, support the prevailing status quo – social, economic, and political elites. The study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the analytic framework, investigating how print media (sometimes referred to as ‘print capitalism’) utilized framing techniques that disparaged the two political organizations but in very different ways. The analysis incorporates articles appearing in the New York Post and the New York Times from the inception of each organization, through six weeks after the 2012 Presidential Inauguration; articles were coded to uncover themes that defined both organizations as ‘outsiders.’ Tea Partiers are characterized as irrational demagogues, while Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activities are criminalized; both are dismissed as irrelevant, leaving the predominant ‘mainstream’ political rule intact. Findings identify tools of discourse used by media to limit the influence of competing movements while essentially protecting the status quo. Revealing these tools provides clues to unreliable discourse in media coverage of presidential candidates, which tends to quash open debate and threaten principles of participatory government.

Strategic Framing Matters But Varies: A Structural Topic Modeling Approach to Analyzing China’s Foreign Propaganda About the 2019 Hong Kong Protests on Twitter

“…Six strategic frames identified in this study are part of the "protest paradigm" (Chan & Lee, 1984), which is largely conflict-oriented and stated in negative tones with the goal to mitigate the disturbance and protect the status quo (Veneti et al, 2016). As discussed earlier, one prominent communication strategy is to separate "outsiders" (e.g., radical protesters, pro-democracy politicians, organizers of nonpermitted assemblies, western politicians supporting the protests) from "insiders" (e.g., HK government, pro-Beijing politicians and scholars, patriotic or anti-violence citizens; see also Lynn & Williams, 2018). By means of delegitimizing and marginalizing those challenging the pro-establishment authority, the separation reflects both power relations and moral judgements that situate outsiders at a disadvantaged position in social media content.…”

“…When framing protests and social movements, state media tend to adopt two overarching communication strategies in order to undermine the disturbance and thereby protecting the status quo in the ideological sense. The first strategy is to separate "outsiders" from "insiders" (Lynn & Williams, 2018). State actors such as political officials, mainstream media, and the judicial system are often defined as insiders, while groups or individuals that challenge the status quo are treated as outsiders.…”