News media framing of social protests around racial tensions during the Donald Trump presidency

Abstract

Media framing of social protests can influence public opinion and governmental response. An extensive line of scholarly work had pointed to the existence of two alternative news frames; public order and debate. We argue that prior work may have been limited by the reliance on deductive strategies using predefined, theoretically-driven frames. Using a data-driven computational method, the Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMN), we examine mainstream news’ framing of two contentious protests that took place during Donald Trump’s presidency; Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA ( n = 1231 news articles), and the Black Lives Matter protests ( n = 2810). In addition to the frames found in past research, we identify a prominent Politics frame, often focussing on the role of Trump in inciting and reacting to racial tensions. An in-depth analysis of the application of frames to each protest revealed a nuanced use of the Protest Paradigm. We suggest possible revisions to existing theories, and discuss the potential social and political implications of our findings.