Media coverage of protests usually focuses on violent events, which is understandable because they are dramatic and grab attention. However, it is important to balance such episodic coverage with analyses of the underlying issues under discussion and why people are protesting. This requires more time and effort, but it also helps to create a sense of legitimacy for protestors and the movement they represent.
While there is considerable variation among individual pieces of news coverage, most protest stories follow a pattern that has come to be known as the “protest paradigm”. This script includes: a focus on the alleged violence, the use of official sources instead of those from protesters, and a news frame that delegitimizes the root cause (e.g., riot, a focus on the violence; confrontation, a focus on clashes between protestors and police; spectacle, a focus on emotions or drama).
Protestors’ own testimonies, either in legacy media like newspapers or social media platforms, offer an alternative to this paradigm. They are a form of representation that, on the one hand, allows journalists to identify with those who share their experiences and, on the other hand, moves them into the realm of history and accountability by offering impersonal witness testimony.
The analysis of protest turnout coverage shows that the most important predictors of contentious turnout reporting are demonstration size and the gap between organizer and police estimates. Other factors, such as organizations and issues, have much less potency.