Abstract
News coverage of protests typically employs a protest paradigm: framing strategies for marginalizing protest actors and reducing the significance of protest issues and aims. However, recent studies are detecting less prototypical media responses, indicating the need to identify the extent of application of the protest paradigm and the underlying determinants for variations within media politics of dissent. This analysis of the framing of a Cypriot environmental campaign ‘Save Akamas’ by three national newspapers indicated that the coverage deviated from the protest paradigm. The results showed little emphasis on social deviance but validation of the protests in varying magnitudes through frames articulating governmental responsibility, environmental conservation, and ambivalence towards economic grievances. Finally, supplemented with interviews with two protest organizers and journalists, respectively, this article examines the conditions under which citizen protests mitigate media spectacles through appropriating legitimation strategies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | European Journal of Communication |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - Feb 2022 |
Keywords
- environmental campaigns
- legitimation strategies
- media appropriation
- media framing
- Protest news
- protest paradigm
- social media