Street Demonstrations and the Media Agenda: An Analysis of the Dynamics of Protest Agenda Setting

Abstract

This article argues that the agenda-setting power of protest must be understood in dynamic terms. Specifically, it develops and tests a dynamic theory of media reaction to protest which posits that features of street demonstrations—such as their size, violence, societal conflict, and the presence of a “trigger”—lead protest issues to be reported and sustained in the media agenda over time. We conduct a unique empirical analysis of media coverage of protest issues, based upon a data set of 48 large-scale street demonstrations in nine countries. Time-series cross-sectional analysis is used to estimate the dynamic effects of demonstration features on media coverage of the protest issue. The findings show that violence can increase media attention in the short term and larger protest size sustains it over the longer term. The agenda-setting power of protest is structured in time.