Troublemakers in the Streets? A Framing Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Protests in the UK 1992–2017

Abstract

Research indicates that when mainstream news media report about demonstrations, protesters often face delegitimizing coverage. This phenomenon, known as the “(journalistic) protest paradigm,” is thought to be a default mindset that leads journalists to emphasize the method of protesters over their message. However, empirical work has so far limited itself to specific protest movements or events and only covers brief periods. This study first identifies and then codes the main frames in all reports about domestic protest in the United Kingdom. Analysing data that covers eight national newspapers during a 26 year period ( N = 27,496), I provide a more systematic understanding of how the mainstream news media in liberal democracies report about protests. The analysis shows that a stable majority of articles uses frames linked to the protest paradigm throughout the time period. However, a substantial and growing number of articles employ legitimizing frames—either on their own or co-existing with delegitimizing framing.

Unarmed Violence, Police Perspectives, Community Struggle: Black- and White-centric news accounts of Black Protests about Policing in the U.S. 1994-2010

“…At the same time, there is broad consensus among those who have researched news production that mainstream news reporters rely heavily on routine communication from public officials as sources and use standards of "newsworthiness" that privilege elite understandings of what is important (e.g., Bennett 1990, Lawrence 1996, Lawrence 2000, Schudson 2002, even as all the cited writers note that this broad pattern does not mean that officials are never criticized-especially as officials may be the sources of critique for other officials-nor that non-officials are never heard. Media scholars have devoted substantial attention to the reliance on official sources in the "protest paradigm," in which news coverage of a protest focuses more on the conflict between protesters and authorities than on the substantive issue at stake (Gil-Lopez 2021, Gruber 2023, Harlow and Brown 2023, Martin, Rafail and McCarthy 2017, McLeod. 2007).…”

Framing Social Movements on Social Media

“…On the other hand, news media frequently offers delegitimizing frames of protestors to uphold the status quo through the "protest paradigm" (McLeod and Detenber, 1999). However, more recent work has found news media to also offer more sympathetic and legitimizing coverage that considers protestors' grievances and demands (Mourão et al, 2021;Gruber, 2023). In digitallymediated social movements, journalists have even found themselves alongside SMOs as core movement actors who mediate the flow of relevant information (Isa and Himelboim, 2018).…”