1. Representations of Protest on News Portals: The cases of Taksim, Tahrir, Occupy Wall Street & Indignants in Guardian.com/uk, Hotnews.ro, Repubblicca.it and In.gr STAMATIS POULAKIDAKOS, UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS ANASTASIA VENETI, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER ACHILLES KARADIMITRIOU, UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS BIANCA MITU, UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST

2. Media and Protests mobilization of political support legitimization (validation) in the mainstream discourse Broadening of conflicts scope

3. Negative ways of framing in the (mainstream) Media «Marginalization» or even «delegitimization» of many social movements Emphasis on protesters’ violent actions Downgrading of the aims and reasons of their manifestation Protest Paradigm of Chan & Lee (1984) support of the status quo and marginalization of groups that may challenge it Portrayal of protesters as an isolated minority characterized by overt deviant behavior Social movements that challenge governments’ policies are less likely to gain media coverage

4. Examples of negative media coverage through negative framing  Press and television coverage of a mass demonstration against the Vietnam War in London (27 th of October 1968).  U.S. mainstream newspapers’ coverage of social protests in the United States between 1967 and 2007.  National television coverage of Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2005).  Eight US newspapers coverage of the protests against the US invasion in Iraq (2003).  U.S. Media coverage of women’s movement in the United States from 1966 to 1986.  Media coverage of the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle (1999) and the World Bank/IMF protests in Washington, DC, (2000)

5. Definitely there are exceptions… of media supporting collective actions Serbian non- mainstream Media (particularly Radio B 92) supported the street protest and facilitated the regime change (Barker, 2008) Georgia’s non- mainstream Media challenged the legitimacy of authoritarian government led by President Eduard Shevardnadze (Sulkanishvili, 2003) Greek TV news bulletins presented the Greek indignants movement in a rather positive way (Veneti & Poulakidakos, 2012)

6. Research Objective To examine how 4 mainstream news portals framed the 4 movements, looking specifically at characteristics of discourse and images. Tahrir square, Taksim square, “Indignants” and Occupy Wall Street in.gr, repubblica.it, hotnews.ro, guardian.com/uk  Main Research Question: What kind of representations are mostly raised by the 4 mainstream websites with regard to the protests?

7. We expected  1. the negative representations of the protests expressed mainly through the focus on violence caused by the protesters.  2. the “use” of official sources.  3. the framing of the protests as illegal.  4. that media - within the financial crisis context - would focus on the economic consequences of the protests, mainly in a negative way.  5. that mainstream media would emphasize - mostly in a negative way- the marginalization of the protesters.  6. that media would devaluate the aims and purposes of the protests.  7. the downsizing of the protests.  8. a rather negative tonality in the representation of the movements in the overall coverage. Research Hypotheses

8.  Quantitative content analysis, conducted with the use of a coding protocol.  News portals considered to be among the most popular ones in their countries in terms of number of visits.  Greece-Italy: Southern European countries facing considerable financial and social problems.  Romania: ex-communist country striving to find its way to development within a difficult financial environment.  UK: “Control” country from Northern Europe.  N=527 (in.gr=137, hotnews.ro= 135, theguardian.com/uk=136, repubblica.it= 119) Methodology - Sample

9.  The selection was made through research adapted to the peculiarities of the search engines.  In each search engine we used as keywords “Taksim square”, “Tahrir square”, “Indignants” and “Occupy Wall Street”, choosing the most relevant articles to each protest.  Our selection of the articles was based on qualitative rather than quantitative criteria, due to the restrictions of the relevant search engines.  The coding unit was the article.  This method can be more efficient in capturing the content and themes of the overall coverage.  Articles were coded for the presence for or against the protesters, or absence of several frames (conflict, violence, downgrading, economic consequences, illegal character, human interest, devaluation of causes and aims, marginalization). Coding the Sample

10. No reference or neutral “reference” to violence or rationalized violence, with some exceptions. * Partial rejection of the 1st research hypothesis Text Image-Video Violent Acts Framing?

11. Rather limited use of official sources, with the exception of Hotnews.ro. * Partial rejection of 2 nd research hypothesis. Use of official sources?

12. Almost total lack of “illegal” framing. * Rejection of the 3rd research hypothesis. Text Image-Video “ illegal ” framing of protests character?

13. Very limited reference to economic consequences. * Rejection of the 4 th research hypothesis. Text Image- Video Economic Consequences framing?

14. Lack of marginalization frame in the majority of cases. Mostly positive marginalization in few cases. * Rejection of the 5th research hypothesis. Marginalization framing?

15. Lack of devaluation of the causes and aims of the protests. In Guardian & Repubblica small tendency of positive framing. * Rejection of the 6 th research hypothesis. Devaluation of the causes and aims?

16. Either no representations of downsizing at all, or references to the size of the protests in a positive way. * Rejection of the 7 th research hypothesis. Devaluation of the size of protests?

17. Conclusions I References to illegal character of the protests, marginalization and economic consequences are almost absent News items include a great number of positive references to the size of protests The journalism discourse – in most of the cases - is positive towards the protesters Great emphasis is placed on the violence during the protests (even though this violence is usually not attributed to protesters) Generally, protests are not presented in negative ways

18. Conclusions II Protests are not depicted as social movements and readers are given a rather superficial impression of them. There are hardly comparative references or critical associations between the protests in various countries. When protests are associated with the wider context, great emphasis is placed on conflict against the local government or the police. Protests are usually presented as individual events, isolated from a broader socio-economic context

19. Conclusions III The lack of an in-depth political discussion on the aims of the protests and the lack of references to the organizational structure of the movements permit the ‘convenient’ adoption of a positive stance towards the protests (which is actually superficial).

20. THANK YOU

21. Thematic vs. Episodic framing

22. Conflict Frame: against whom?