Framing Dissent: Mass-Media Coverage of the Global Justice Movement

Abstract

This study explores the framing practices employed by mainstream mass-media outlets in the United States in their coverage of the Global Justice Movement during two major episodes of contention: the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999 and the World Bank/IMF protests in Washington, DC in 2000. A content analysis of prominent and influential newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Boston Globe—and television networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX—rendered five predominant frames: the Violence Frame, the Disruption Frame, the Freak Frame, the Ignorance Frame, and the Amalgam of Grievances Frame. These frames emerge from the interactive relationship between social movements and the mass media, which is bracketed by journalistic norms and values, and results in a dialectic of escalation whereby dissidents feel pressed to radicalize their tactics and rhetoric if they want to gain mass-media attention.