Exploring Internet Influence on the Coverage of Social Protest

7/29/2019 Exploring Internet Influence on the Coverage of Social Protest

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EXPLORING INTEJRNET INFLUENCEON THE COVERAGE OF SOCIAL PROTEST.CONTENT ANALYSIS COM PARINGPROTEST CO VERAG E IN 1967 AND 1999By Sonora jha

This study examined the coverage of two social protests set three decadesapart. Findings show ed that journalists covering anti-WTO protests in1999 relied on official and autho ritative sources more than journalistscovering anti-Vietnam war protests in 1967, despite today's Internet-enabled access to alternative sources and thematic analyses. No changewas see n in use of protester sources or them atic versus episodic framesin story valence. Providing a backdrop to today's emerging study ofonline information seeking by journalists, this study suggests that con-ventional strategies in news sourcing and framing may en dure despitethe resourcefulness facilitated today by the Internet.

Social movement organizations consider both social protest andnews coverage of social protest to be major political resources. Thispaper expores where the two intersect, by examining whether journal-ists follow a pattern in protest coverage. This study inquires also intowhether sourcing strategies and framing of social protest has begunfo change as journalists gain access fo contacts and debates/argu-m ents/research over the Internet.A good location to stud y such informafion seeking by the press iswithin the info-acfivism created in cyberspace during the protestsagainst the World Trade Organization's ministerial meeting in Seatfle inNov ember an d D ecember of 1999. The WTO meetings between govern-ments and trade organizations from across the world were shut downafter human rights groups, students, environmental groups, religiousleaders, labor rights activists, and other groups with diverse agendasthronged the streets of Seattle demanding fairer, less exploitative tradedecision making. This mobilization of masses of people with non-vio-lent as well as anarchist protes t repertoires w as one of fhe first exam plesof trans-border networking and activism facilitated by the Internet;activists used Web sites, e-mail, listserves, e-groups, and Indymedia tomobilize.

Even though the Internet provides movements such as this one atool for political organiza tion of those who are "accessible" (i.e., know l-


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edgeable, interested, sym pathetic Web surfers or those w ho devise theirpersonalized political information n etwo rks over digital media), ma in-stream media are still the ones expected to provoke popular debate andpublic opinion. How the mass media respond to these debates them-selves and how they access via the Internet the contexts and argumentsbehind the movement become questions fundamental to a democracystill dependent on mainstream med ia for generation of public opinion.

Refiecting the hierarchy in government and society,' scholars SoUTCesargue , journalists defer to a hierarchy in sourcingofficial sources over and Socialunofficial ones, sources in government and industry over those outside.^ ProtestWhen covering social protests, even general reporters rarely interviewordinary protesters, and organizations that are resource-poor have prob-lems gaining coverage.^ Gans noted that disorder news is affected bywhose order is being upset and focuses on the restoration of order."*The strategies used by social protesters may involve differentbehaviorseven disruptive behaviorto garner attention from themedia, but p rotesters have little control over the aspects and actions tha tthe media choose to highlight or underplay' In a 1994 book on themedia and the Vietnam anti-war movement. Small writes "Oppositionalmass movements have a difficult time obtaining fair, much less favor-able, coverage from establishment media, even in the freest of democra-cies. For a variety of economic, polifical and institutional reasons, jour-nalists and their employers tend to denigrate those out of the main-stream... ." '

Small's content analysis of new spape rs, m agazines, and televisioncoverage showed that journalists concentrated on violent and radicalalbeit colorful behavior on the fringes of the activity. They und ercoun t-ed the crowds and ignored political arguments the protesters' lead ershippresented. Moreover, the "fairness doctrine" had journalists going out oftheir way to carry the views of counter-demo nstrators and the establish-ment whenever they covered the views of protesters.'Research during the past few decades has shown that the media

treat non-mainstream points of view as unduly deviant and therebyrestrict the diversity of polifical discourse.' In the context of coverage ofsocial movements and social protest, then, "framing" becomes as imp or-tant to consider as sourcing.

Iyengar and Kinder explored the direct impact of episodic and the-matic news formats, or frames, on viewers' attributions of responsibilityfor political issues and the indirect effects of these frames on public opin-ion in general. The aufhors found that journalists routinely fail fo provide

The Framesof SocialProtest


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SocialMovements,the Internet,and thePress

issues, through selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration." Theeffects of such coverage of social protest and political issues, then, leadsto readers and viewers perceiving issues as "problems"'^ and to offeringstatus quo support to the establishm ent."What does the theoretical framework point to in the context ofmedia coverage of social movem ents and social protest? In other w ords,how do the media frame protest? According to scholars, novelty, pole-mic, confrontation, and con troversy are the frames tha t win media atten-tion for social movem ents.' '' Studies have sho wn that new s coverage ofsocial protest marginalizes challenging groups and depicts selection biasor de scription bias.'^

Establishing a presence over the Internet, it is believed, will be oneof the key factors that contribute to a social movement or contentiousgrou p rising to prominence.'* The Internet has been used w ith equalvigor by the right and left, and Internet skill is now considered integralto political communication among progressive intellectuals, students,and activists.'''Mainstream media, meanwhile, are seen as becoming less ap-proachable because of em erging ideologies and exigencies.' As an alter-native, the Internet is celebrated for contributing to political normaliza-tion, democrattc pluralism," the development of a democratic mediapolitics by the establishment of alternative media,^" and "the cyber-dif-

fusion of contention."^'Does the power of the Internet as a political and communicationtool, then, circumvent the relevance of the mainstream mass media?Research and practice suggest not, pointing out that mainstream mediain fact, gain particular importance in the "network information politics"of transnational advocacy n etw orks .^ Netw ork activists cultivate credi-bility w ith the press and package their information in a timely and dra-matic way to draw press attention."Even groups that circumvent a focus on garnering mainstreammedia attention do sometimes provide hypertext links and informationas press releases on their Web sites. ** The Zapatis ta movement inMexico used the Internet for everything from voting in plebiscites byparticipants from forty-seven countries, to drawing in the mainstreammedia to create awareness and ou trage w orldw ide.^For a journalist seeking information on today's social protestsprotest groups' Web sites present complex debates, research papers,rationales, and contact details, all of which may be expected to make themov ement, its contexts, and its participants more accessible to journal-ists than ever before.Stud ies on journa lists ' Inte rnet use in the U nited States^** havechronicled the rapid increase in Internet use by journalists and the grad -


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lous relationship between bloggers and journalists and journalist-blog-A next step in research into Internet use might involve how suchuse plays out in the final product of the journalistthe media storyand the decisions that surround it.The two practices of sourcing/attribution and framing, in particu-lar, are sigruficant to this study for two reasons. First, as the literaturereview above shows, these two practices involve location of power ina given story. Sourcing/attribution determines who gets a "voice," andwho se interpretation of events gets reported in mainstream me dia. Fram-ing, especially thematic framing, gives "context." In one recent study, tel-evision journalists covering breast cancer appeared to have increasedtheir use of thematic frames and their discussion of research develop-ments across time, bu t did n ot change other practices, such as the dom i-nant citation of medical doctors as sources.^^Most important, reporters today, as compared to reporters thir-ty years ago, can access material online and possibly provide a thema-tic, contextualized story on their own terms. So, did access to the Inter-net in 1999 enable reporters to expand their sourcing and/or providegreater thematic framing in their coverage as compared to reporters in1967? As evident from the literature, research into the relationshipbetween movements and the media, and the role of the Internet in thisrelationship, stands at a juncture that is both exciting and undecided.

An earlier study on the WTO protests points to the need to develop anew theory of media, political elites and social movement relations.^'Drawing on the literature and theory presented above, and using thecase of social protest coverage as a lens to study this relationship, the fol-lowing research questions were developed:R Q l: Was there a significant difference in sourcing an dattribution between press coverage of the Vietnam anti-warprotests (March on the Pentagon) in Washington, D.C, inOctober 1967 and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in

November-December 1999?RQ2: Was there a significant difference in "framing"between press coverage of the anti-Vietnam war protests(March on the Pentagon) in Washington, D.C, in October1967 and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in November-December 1999?RQ3: Does the Internet appe ar to have mad e an impacton the sourcing and attribution in press coverage of the anti-WTO protests?


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Method Content Analysis. This content analysis compares the coverage oftwo separate movements. The longitudinal design compares not onepublication's coverage with another's, but the totality of coverage givento one movement by a set of publications with that given to another bythe same (or similar) set of publications. For this, coverage of the anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) protests in Seattie is compared withpre-Internet protest coverage given to the Vietnam anti-war protests.

The Vietnam anti-war protests, in particular "The March on thePentagon" on October 21 and 22, 1967, in Washington, D.C, provide agood comparison for study with the anti-WTO protests labeled "TheBattle for Seattle," held between November 30 and December 3,1999, inSeattle. In both cases, these protests (a) came relatively early in themovement through coalition-building and mobilization; (b) used similarprotest repertoires such as celebrity speakers, banners, slogans, and cos-tumes; (c) involved some violence; (d) attracted police force; and (e)were relatively sudden, which gave the media little time to plan theirsourcing/attribution, or frames for coverage. Even though the twoprotests are separated in time and in journalistic advancement, this veryseparation, in fact, provides the opportunity to study whether the man-ner of journalistic coverage stayed static.

The Sample: Newspapers and Magazines. The publications werechosen to represent national as well as local coverage and newspa-per as well as magazine coverage. This was essential to tap into sourceuse by local as well as national journalists, and episodic as well as "the-matic" frames, the latter being more likely to appear in magazine cover-age.

Three weeks' coverage was picked from each newspaper. Theuniverse of coverage was examined, i.e., the entire newspaper wasscanned for relevant coverage. The newspapers were from October 15through November 4,1967, for the Vietnam anti-war protests, and fromNovember 23 through December 13, 1999, for the anti-WTO protests.This comprises coverage from the week before the protests, the weekduring the protests, and the week after the protest.

For The March on the Pentagon, the national newspaper studiedwas the New York Times, considered the newspaper of record even in th1960s. The local newspaper was the Washington Post, which serves as thlocal newspaper for Washington, D.C.

For the Seattle Protests, the national newspaper was the New YorkTimes, again, and the local newspaper was the Seattle Times. This, ocourse, raises the question of comparability between the Washington Posand the Seattle Times. However, during both protests, these publicationwere the local, big-city publications for the venues where the protestswere situated. Moreover, the sourcing and framing practices of thesetwo publications have been studied together and comparatively in the


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three issues each of Time and Newsweek: the weeks before, during, andafter the protests. The sample p rodu ced a total of 444 stories.The variables used to analyze sourcing patterns were "Official(Govt. and Trade) Sources," "Authoritative (Govt. and Trade) Sources,""Official (Protester) Sources," "Authoritative (Protester) Sources," and"Unkn ow n Protesters." The variables for analyzing framing pafternswere "Frame" and "Valence." The operational definitions for the vari-ables are discussed in the Appendix.Reliability coefficients (Scott's pi) for individual variables wereType of Story .92; Official (Govt. and Trade) Sources .87; Authori-tative (Govt. and Trade) Sources .83; Official (Profesfer) Sources .82;Authoritative (Protester) Sources .85 ; Unk now n Protester .81; Frame .94;Valence .88.

Of the 444 stories analyzed, 232 were anti-Vietnam war protest cov- Resultserage and 212 were anti-WTO protest coverage. A total of 330 of thesewere news stories and 114 were editorials. In the case of the anti-Vietnamwar protest coverage, the local newspaper, the Washington Post, carried106 stories, while the New York Times carried 109. Time provided three sto-ries and Newsweek 14.In the WTO coverage, the Seattle Times carried a total of 152 sto-ries while the New York Times, the national newspaper, had 47. Timemagazine had 5 stories during the three weeks' issues examined, whileNewsweek had 8 stories during this same period.In the total coverage of both protests, a total of 3,752 sourceswere used, w ith 39% as Official (Govt. and T rade) sources, 15% asAuthorita tive (Govt. and Trade) sources, 25% as Official (Protester)sources, 17% as Authoritative (Protester) sources, and 4% as UnknownProtester sources.Analysis of Variance was used to see whether there were any sig-nificant differences between the anti-WTO coverage and Vietnam anti-war coverage on the "sourcing" and "framing" elements. The fivedependent variables (DVs) measuring sourcing patterns. Official (Govt.and Trade) sources. Authoritative (Govt. and Trade) sources. Official(Protester) sources. Authoritative (Protester) sources, and UnknownProtester, were studied with a univariate analysis. The two variablesmeasuring framing patterns, "Frame of the Story," and "Valence of fhestory," were subjected to a chi-square test.

RQl asked whether there was a signiflcant difference in sourcingand attribution between press coverage of the Vietnam anti-war protestsin Washington, D.C, in October 1967 and the anti-WTO protests inSeattle in November-December 1999. Significant effects were obtainedfor tw o of the five "sourc ing" variables, as shown in Table 1.Anti-WTO protest coverage used significantly more official (Govt.


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TABLE 1ANOVA Tests ofDifferences between Anti-WTO Protest Coverage

and Vietnam Anti-war Protest CoverageSource of Variance

Official (Govt. and Trade)SourcesAuthoritative (Govt.and Trade) SourcesOfficial (Protester) Sources

Authoritative (Protester) Sources

Unknown Protesters

* p < .05** p < .01

** p < .001

MeanWTO(sd)

.7109(.7023).4441

(.3720).4593(.4260).6549

(.5349)1.9821

(1.5432)

MeanVietnam

(sd).5106

(.4259).2626(.1945).5471

(.4691).8173

(.9606)1.7619(.9952)

df

1,356

1,191

1,056

1,135

1,074

MeanSquare

3.57

1.19

0.56

1.35

0.74

F value

10.85***

20.69***

2.77

2.23

0.36

EtaSquared

.030

.080

.009

.011

.005

No significant difference was found, however, in the use of official(protester) sources between the anti-WTO protest coverage and the Viet-nam anfi-war protest coverage. Similarly, no significant difference wasfound in the use of authoritative (protester) sources between the anti-WTO protest coverage and the Vietnam anfi-war protest coverage.Finally, no significanf difference was found in the use of "unknown pro-tester" sources between the anti-WTO protest coverage and the Vietnamanti-war protest coverage.RQ2 asked whether a significant difference existed in "framing"between press coverage of the Vietnam anti-war protests and the anti-globalization protests in Seattle. The two variables that measured theframing patterns in the coverage, "Frame of the Story" and "Valence ofthe Story," showed no significant difference between the coverage givento the two protests. For "Frame of the Story," the anti-WTO protest cov-erage had 63 stories w ith a themafic frame, 103 with an episodic frame,and 46 stories in which the frame was mixed. The Vietnam anfi-war cov-erage had 56 stories w ith a themafic frame, 138 stories with an episodicframe, and38 stories with a mixed frame.For the "Valence of the Story," the anti-WTO protest coverage had

42 stories with Valences supporfive of protesters, 57 stories with Va-lences supportive of government/ trade (the target of fhe protesters),


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TABLE 2Comparisons of Frequencies of Protest Coverage and the Prames and Valence

Protest Coverage Frame of the Story Valence of the StoryThematic Episodic Mixed Protesters Go vt./Trade Neutral

Vietnam Coverage 56 138 38 65 58 109

WTO Coverage 63 103 46 42 57 103Chi square = 5.37df = 2p = .068

Chi square = 4.13df = 2p = .127RQ3 and RQ4 inquired into the Internet's influence in the sourc-ing and framing of coverage of WTO protest. However, these datashowed limited use of the Internet by journalists. The number of sto-ries identifying an Internet role wa s very small and therefore not v iablefor statistical analysis. For a sample of the size picked for this study, thelack of an Internet focus or role is in itself quite revealing. The caseswhere the Internet was, in fact, cited, are listed in Table 3 and discussedbelow.

Clearly, the most significant finding of this research is that jour-nalists today seem to be citing official and authoritative sources morethan journalists did in the 1960s, at least as far as protest coverage isconcerned.These findings acquire even more significance in helping under-stand present-day journalism's treatment of social movements andsocial protest, for two reasons. First, it can be argued that from whatwe know about the Vietnam war and its key players, sources like theU.S. president and the U.S. administration, in particular, were u nques -fionably more indispensable to war coverage than they would be tocoverage of the anti-WTO protest, given the considerations of nation-alism and national security. Therefore, journalists could be expected toapproach those sources substantially more often for coverage of a warthan for coverage of free-versus-fair trade issues. The exact oppositeseemed to be the case.

Second, it is important to note one fact about the particularVietnam anti-war protest sampled in this studyThe March on thePentagon. It took place in October 1967, which is noted by political sci-entists and media scholars as being before public opinion turned

Discussion


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Publication and DateTABLE 3

Protest Coverage Displaying Internet InfluenceHeadline Description

Neiu York Times,December 5,1999

New York Times,December 5,1999

"The Nation: Nezv WorldDisorder: Free TradeTalks on Free Speech"

"Word for Word ProtestStudies: Skywriting,

Collective Disappearanceand Other Ways to Upthe Revolution"

The organization of protests online itself becomesthe story. Mentions Seattle historian whose Website (www.historylink.org) "served as a digitaldiary of the disturbances."The organization of protests online itself becomesthe story. Mentions the existence of Web sitescalled www.ruckus.org andwww.nonviolence.org.

Time,December 13 , 1999

"How OrganizedAnarchists Led Seattleinto Chaos"

The organization of protests online itself becomesthe story. Story carries quote from "an onlineactivist."

Newsweek,December 13,1999Seattle Times,December 11,1999

New York Times,December 6, 1999

Seattle Times,December 13,1999

N.A.

"Nerve Gas at WTO?"

"Civil Rights Groups Callfor Investigation"

"Bubble Was Bound toBurst for Gity That P uton Airs"

Three separate m entions of how the protests wereorganized over the Intemet.Cites protest Web site. Reports on claims byprotesters that the police fired nerve gas duringthe protests, and mentions that protestorganizations have asked for reports to be postedover the Internet from protesters w ho can shedlight on the use of nerve gas.*Cites protest Web site. Mentions that the Web siteof the American Civil Liberties Union has invitedcomplaints of wrongful police conduct.*Cites e-mail from "a citizen" on the topicsuggested by the headline of the story.**

Seattle Times,November 28,1999 "// You Are More Worried Cites city e-mail alerts by the Seattle cityAbout Traffic Than Free adminis t ra t ion.**Trade... "

Seattle Times,November 29, 1999 "WTO Week Off to aRocky Start - TradeGenter Locked Down"Cites a Web site for readers to get updates oftraffics and maps.**

Seattle Times,December 10,1999 " WTO Tear-GasMementos Alreadyan Online Memory"

Reporter cites commercial Web site, eBay,discussing the rocks, tear-gas canisters and policebatons being auctioned as memorabilia.***It is interesting to note here that both these stories, in different newspapers, have an episodic frame, and theInternet source w as used not for discussing issues of global trade bu t issues of disorder and clashes with the police.


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media at tirst ignored opposition to the war and, after the My Lai mas-sacre and the Tet offensive in 1968 and 1969, respectively, merely fol-lowed p ublic opinion w hen it becam e too large to ignore.^' So, du ringthe coverage of TheMarch on the Pentagon in 1967, the credibility of ofti-cial sources was not already an issue for journalists, at least not as muchas after 1968. One cou ld, therefore, expect grea ter reliance at the time onofficial sources. Vietnam era journalists like Walter Cronkite and DavidBrinkley have, in hindsight, explained this reliance as resulting from thelack of official dissent. Brinkley, who is noted as critiquing America's rolein the Vietnam war as early as in 1963, has said, "I don 't think that manypeople did disagree (with Am erica's role in the wa r). And those that did,did n't want to go public."^^In the case of the anti-WTO protests in 1999, however, nationalsecurity w as no t an issue; journalists did not need to index' announc e-ments or decisions from government administration. The increase inreliance on official sources in the WTO protests over the Vietnam anti-war protests, then, signifies a growing and almost reflexive dependenceon "the official" as the dominant and primary source. One example ofthis was the quoting of a public speech by President Bill Clinton, whohad arrived in Seattie for the WTO meetings. The Seattle Times led itsreport w ith: "President C linton today referred to the 'interesting h oopla 'surrou nding the WTO protests, conde mning people w ho came to Seattleto 'break w indow s, hurt small businesses and stop people from going tomeetings to have their say.'"^

How ever, even w hen there wa s no press conference or speech man -dating coverage (for instance in a multi-part, serialized news analysis bythe New York Times), stories were focused overwhelmingly on reactionsfrom official and authoritative sources (city ofticials, merchants, WTOdelegates, international governments) with little or no perspectives fromprotesters.'^ This intensification of reliance on official sources, in partic-ular, indicates that journalists today, more than in the sixties, may bewh at John N ichols and Robert W.McC hesney refer to as "stenog raphersto power."^^It is important to acknowledge, however, that journalistic relianceon official sources du ring the WTO protests m ay be explained by the factthat the target for these protests was a more diverse group of institutions,albeit one that included government and trade sources. Journalists maynot hav e been questioning the credibility of these official sources as muchas in the case of The March on the Pentagon, where the target was clear-ly the governm ent a nd military.The findings also showed, however, that the significantiy greaterdependence on official and authoritative sources from within the estab-lishment is not matched by a corresponding increase in sourcing andattribution of official and authoritative sources from the other side of theissue. The New York Times series discussed above is also a good example


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ness." This is consistent with the literature on social protest coverageover the decades: journalists feature u nus ual participants but ignore therank-and-file demonstrators.' ' 'Next, the lack of a change in the frames given to the two protestsfurther indicates that coverage of social protest does, in fact, follow apattern. Journalists have traditionally been criticized for favoringepisodic over thematic frames, using their own frames and filters to thedetriment of the movement message, and rarely exposing casual read-ers and viewers to the rationale behind fhe movements' arguments.'*Such a continued prevalence of thematic stories using episodicframes with a negative valence, citing "quote-worthy" protesters andemploying descriptions of color, costumes, and mayhem, is typified inthe words of journalist Kenneth Klee in the Newsweek cover story titled"Seattle Under Seige," on December 13, 1999: " The protests drew anequally wide array of groups, from stilt walkers to beefy Teamstermechanics fo a guy in a get-up tha t m ade him look like J.P. Morgan witha sinister mo squito beak. Where was he from? 'Planet Earth.'"This also serves as an example of episodic coverage prevailingdespite a thematic formatthis was a "news feature" magazine article,where thematic discussions are better facilitated than in news reports indaily new spapers.

A social movement like the anti-globalization movement, which isrelatively new, with diverse and dispersed issues, is more challengingfor a rea de r/au dien ce m ember to imme diately recognize. For mediacoverage to form public opinion on it, more thematic coverage may infact be necessary.^' To have it played out in the mainstream med ia asepisodic news of "disorder" and "deviance," increasing the media'sreliance on sources such as fhe police, fire officials, owners of damagedproperfy, and ofher such official sources once again points to a patternof protest coverage with templates of delegitimization built intoreporte rs' coverage decisions.This brings the discussion to fhe other key focus of this study, therole of fhe In ternet. While the findings above are consistent with fhe lit-eratu re on the coverage of social protest,'"' and confribute to that litera-ture some contemporary and comparative perspective, the limited useof the Web by journa lists speaks to the continue d discou nting of pro test-er sources. Given the multiple points of access to the movement's dis-cussions available via the Internet, journalists could actually havemoved beyond reliance on (and suspicion about, and ethical concernwith using) protester press releases, meetings, or other material.Because the Internet elem ent emerged in sfories only a handful of times,an en tire listing of fhis is provided in Table 3.

This apparent non-impact of the Internet on protest coverage isconsistent with the literature, particularly a 1994 study on journalists'Internet use,*' which found that "the forms of information retrieval may


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with journalists who covered the anti-WTO protests has found fhaf jour-nalists did refer to the Internet but, ultimately, not only relied on old pat-terns of protest coverage bu t also used the Internet predomin antly for thesame sources that they would have referred to anyway, albeit offline."''We cannot conclude, however, that all journalists all the time are

dismissive or resistant to accessing protest sources over the Internet ordirecting their readers/audiences to information and debates availableon Web sites. For one thing, 1999 was really only the beginning of theWeb age, which can explain the limited Internet role in WTO coverage.While protesters w ere using the Web in new and creative ways to mobi-lize, journalists were still acquiring the skills and the savvy to use theWeb without compromising credibility.This study, therefore, may be viewed as a foundation for fhe sys-tematic and continued analysis of journ alists' use of the Web and Internetin providing voice and context to stories such as social protest, civil ac-tion, and people's movements. Obviously, this content analysis did notsample online media to determine what was there in 1999. This wasbecause the content analysis was designed to compare periodsthe anti-WTO protests with the Vietnam anti-war protests. The Vietnam anti-warprotests, of course, were nof covered on line.Future research, therefore, might involve a study of online cover-age using the same modes of analysis (i.e., sourcing and framing) toexplore journalists' use of the Internet and their distribution of Web siteinformation and hypermedia links within their stories; studies of hyper-

linking by online journalisfs are now emerging.""Future research should include not only quantitative analyses butalso qualitative analyses, through in-depth interviews and surveys, withjournalists who covered the anti-WTO protests and other protests (suchas the protests against the war in Iraq, especially since these grew out ofthe anti-globalization protests with some of the same groups and,indeed , the sam e Web sites), to inquire into the reality and reasons for thechoices journalists made in their sourcing, framing, and Internet use. It ispossible, for instance, that these journalists did, in fact, use onlineresources but d id not cite them in the stories, thereby m aking them invis-ible to a content analysis.It becomes important to acknowledge here that this study is anattempt to track early impact and use of the Internet by journalists. Whilenetwork activists were early adopters of the Web for coalifion buildingand mobilizing for the WTO protests, journalists in 1999 were likelyresistant to using the Web and the Internet as overt, attributable sourcesof information. This suspicion about the credibility of the Web is one pos-sible explanation for the fact that journalists were more likely to writestories about activists' use of the Web/Internet than they were to usethese technologies themselves.Moreover, in 1999 journalists also viewed these information tech-


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which to track emerging information-gathering practices in the news-room. Docum enting the use of the Internet during its early years m ightprovide insights into its current and future use.For instance, much is likely to have changed betw een 1999 and thepresent in terms of journ alists' reception of information from alternativevoices over the Internet, such as blogs. One significant question to askwould be: In their use of the Internet, have journalists begun using Websites, blogs, or people cited on these, as primary sources? Some newstudies have suggested that even though some journalists stay resistantto using Internet technologies,''^ and report skepticism of social move-ments ' Web sites,''^ they d o seem receptive to corporate and public rela-tions organizations' Web sites, and even interact online with theseorganizations.'"' One study has shown that even bloggers continue towork within existing discourses about the war in Iraq, primarilyemploying pro-war and anti-war frames.''*To summarize, this paper's findings on how journalists use theInternet, and its disuse for certain types of coverage, points even morestrongly to what scholars have called a selection bias.'" It also alerts usto the need to study patterns of "gatek eeping" in journalists' use of theInternet. This stud y con tributes to the stud y of the sociology of newsproduction in an Internet age, as well as the reception of new socialmov ements by the press. Other studies on the political com municationstrategies of social movements, particularly during social protests, mayhelp build a body of theory for the study of Internet-age social protestand press coverage.Appendix and Notes follow.


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APPENDIXOperational Definitions for Variables Used in Coding

Official (Govt. and Trade) Sources: U.S. President, U.S. Administration, City Officials, Wspokespersons. South Vietnamese government officials, governments of other countries.Authoritative (Govt. and Trade) Sources: U.S. corporations, U.S. trade representatives, fmer WTO/IMF officials and visiting WTO delegates, defense spokespersons, academicsand journalists suppo rting war/free-trad e, owners and officials of damag ed public prop -erty, and other supporters/commentators speaking in an official capacity.Official (Protester) Sources: protest organization officials, "celebrity" or well-known prtesters, officials of alternative/independent media, academics and journalists againstwar/free trade and other supporters/ commentators speaking in an official capacity.North V ietnamese and NLF (National Liberation Front) officials speak ing out against thewar, and government officials speaking out against the war, or, often, against PresidentLyndon Johnson 's w ar policies.Authoritative (Protester) Sources: "Qu ote-worthy" protesters, those who engaged in acts violence, protesters in costumes, protest hand-outs, banners and slogans, academics asprotest participants, and, finally, "protesters," or "doves" as a general, all-inclusive term.Unknoiun Protester: the rank-and-file protester who is neither an official or organizationmember nor speaking from a position of authority.Frame of Story: Stories were coded as having either "Episodic," "Thematic," or "Mixed"frames (coded "\" "1" and "3 " respectively), and coders were asked to judge these on thebasis of whether a story was largely one or the other of these.Valence of Story: Stories were coded as "Valence supportive of protesters," "Valence sup-portive of protest target (W TO /Gov t. and Pentagon), or "Valence is neu tral." Coderswere trained to identify even the subtler means that journalists use to provide a negativevalence toward any group or issue. Some of these means werequotation marks inter-jecting comm entary (such as "peace march") and stance adverbs that connote legitimacyor lack of it (such as allegedly, supposedly, ostensibly).

Note: The single significant difference between the codebook for the anti-WTO protestsand the anti-Vietnam war protests was that in the case of the former, it was important totap into the Internet effect, i.e., to get at answers to RQ3 and RQ4. For this, two colum nswere used for each variable in the codebook for the anti-WTO protests - one for codingthose stories where sources did no t appear to be from the Internet, and the other for thosethat did. Coders were asked to code in the second category when the story quoted some-one directly or indirectly from a Web site or quoted an Internet posting.


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NOTES1. Bernard C. Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1963); Leon V. Sigal, Reporters and OfficiaisThe Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Lexington, M A: D.C. Hea

and Company, 1973); Dan D . Nim mo , Political Communication and PubOpinion in America (Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear Publishing Company,1978); Herbert J. Gans, Deciding Wha t's New s: A Study of CBS EveningNews, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (NY: Pantheon Books,1979); Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin, TX: University ofTexas Press, 1980).2. Gans, Deciding What's News; W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politiof Illusion (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1988); Patrick Daley and DanO'Neill, "Sad Is Too Mild A Word: Press Coverage of the Exxon ValdezOil Spill," Journal of Communication 41 (autumn 1991): 42-57; Sandra HDickson, "Press and U.S. Policy Toward Nicaragua, 1983-1987: A Stiadyof the New York Times and Washington Post," Journalism Quarterly 69 1992): 562-71; Jonathan Mermin, Debating War and Peace: Media Coverof U .S. Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1999).3. Edie N . Goldenberg, Making the Papers: The Access of Resource-PGroups to the Metropolitan Press (Lexington, MA: D.C Heath, 1975);Frances Fox Piven an d Richard A.C loward, Poor People's Movements: WhThey Succeed, How They Fail (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1979).4. Gans, Deciding What's News, 54.5. Todd Gitiin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Maand Unmaking of the New Left (Berkley, CA: U nivers ity of California Press1980).6. Melvin Small, Covering Dissent: The Media and The Anti-VietnaWar Movement (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 2.7. Small, Covering Dissent.8. Douglas M . McLeod and James K. Hertog, "Social C ontrol, SocialChange, and the Mass Media's Role in the Regulation of ProtestGroups," in Moss Media, Social Control and Social Change: A MacrosPerspective, ed. David Demers and K. Viswanath (Ames, IA: Iowa StateUniversity Press, 1999), 305-30.9. Shanto Iyengar, is Anyone Responsible? How Television FramPolitical Issues (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991).10. Gans, Deciding What's News.11. Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching; James W. Tankard, LauraHanderson, Jackie Sillberman, Kriss Bliss, and Salma Ghanem, "MediaFrames: Approaches to Conceptualization and Measurement" (paperpresented at the an nual mee ting of AEJMC, Boston, MA, 1991).

12. Sharon H. lorio and Susan S. Hux man , "Media C overage of Poli-tical Issues and the Framing of Personal Concerns," Journal of Com-


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14. Kay L. Scholzman and John T. Tierney, Organized Interests andAmerican Demoeracy (NY: Harper and Row, 1986); William A. Gamsonand David S. Meyer, "Framing Political Opportunity," in ComparativePerspectives On Social Movements, ed. Doug McAdam, John McCarthy,and Mayer N . Zald (NY: Gam bridge U niversity Press, 1996), 275.15. Gharlotte Ryan, Kevin M. Carragee, and William Meinhofer,"Theory into Practice: Framing, the Ne ws M edia, and Collective Action,"Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 45 (winter 2001): 175-82.16. David Resnik, "Politics on the Internet: The Normalization ofCyberspace," in The Politics of Cyberspace: A New Political Science Reader,ed. Chris Toulouse and Timothy W Luke (NY: Rou tledge, 1998).17. David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow, The Social Movement Society:Contentious Politics for a New Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman andLittlefield, 1998); Douglas Kellner, "Intellectuals, the New Public Sphere,and Technopolitics," in The Politics of Cyberspace: A New Political Science

Reader, ed. Chris Toulouse and Timothy W Luke (NY: Routledge, 1998);Kevin A. Hughes and John E. Hill, Cyberpolitics (Lanham, MD: Rowmanand Littlefield 1998); Peter J. Smith and Elizabeth Smythe, "Sleepless inSeattle: Challenging the WTO in a Globalizing World" (paper presentedat the annual meeting of fhe Infernafional Political Science Association,Quebec City, 1999); Jackie Smith and Timothy Patrick Moran, "WTO 101:Myths About the World Trading System," Dissent (spring 2000): 66-70;Michael E. Gordon and Lowell Turner, "Making TransnationalCollaboration Work," in Transnational Cooperation Among Labor Unions,ed. M ichael E. Gordon and Lowell Turner (Ithaca, NY:Comell U niversityPress, 2000); Jackie Smith, "Globalizing Resistance: The Battle of Seattleand The Future of Social Movements," Mobilization 6 (spring 2001): 1-19.

18. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Con-sentThe Political Economy of the Mass Media (NY:Pantheon Books, 1988);Herbert I. Schiller, Culture, Inc: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression(New York: Oxford Universify Press, 1989); Noam Chomsky, DeterringDemocracy (NY: Hill and Wang, 1992); Ben H. Bagdikian, The MediaMonopoly (Bosfon, MA: Beacon Press, 2000).19. Resnick, "Politics on the Internet."20. Kellner, "Intellectuals, the New Public Sphere, and Technopoli-tics."21. Jeffrey M. Ay res, "From the Sf reefs fo the Internet: The Cyber-Diffusion of Contention," The Annals of the American Academy of Politicaland Social Science 566 (November 1999): 132-43.22. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, "Transnational AdvocacyNetworks," in The Social Movement Society, ed. David S. Meyer andSidney Tarrow (Lanham, MD: Rowm an and Littlefield, 1998).23. Keck and Sikkink, "Transnational Advocacy Networks."24. Smith and Smythe,"Sleepless in Seattle."25. Harry M. Cleaver, Jr., "The Zapatista Effecf: The Internet and the


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Proceedings 52 (October 2000): 98-114; Don Middleberg and Steven S.Ross, Seventh Annual Middleberg/Ross Survey of Media in the Wired World(NY: Middleberg Euro RSCG, 2001); Sonora Jha-Nambiar, "The Site ofCoverage: The Impact of Internet-Mounted Social Movement Protests onJournalists' Coverage Decisions" (paper presented at the annual meetingof fhe AEJMC, Miami Beach, FL, 2002); Bruce Garrison, "HowNewspaper Reporfers Use fhe Web to Gather News," Newspaper ResearchJournal 24 (summer 2003): 62-75; David H. Weaver, Randal A. Beam,Bonnie J. Brownlee, Paul S. Voakes, and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, TheAmerican Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of aNew Millennium (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006).

27. Stephen Coleman, "Blogs and the New Politics of Listening,"Political Quarterly 76 (spring 2005): 272-80; Donald Matheson, "Weblogsand the Epistemology of the News: Some Trends in Online Journalism,"New Media & Society 6 (August 2004): 443-68; Thomas J. Johnson andBarbara K. Kaye, "Wag the Blog: How Reliance on Traditional Mediaand the Internet Influence Credibility Perceptions of Weblogs AmongBlog Users," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81 (autumn2004): 622-42.

28. Sooyoung Cho, "Network News Coverage of Breast Cancer, 1974-2003," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 83 (spring 2006): 11630.

29. Andrew Rojecki, "Modernism, State Sovereignty and Dissent:Media and the New Post-Cold War Movements," Critical Studies in MediaCommunication 19 (June 2002): 152-71.30. Marda Dunsky, "Missing: The Bias Implicit in the Absent," ArabStudies Quarterly 23 (summer 2001): 1-29; Russell Frank, "When BadThings Happen in Good Places: Pastoralism in Big-City Newspaper Co-verage of Small-Town Violence," Rural Sociology 68 Qune 2003): 207-30;Leonard Witt, "Is Public Journalism Morphing into the Public'sJournalism?" National Civic Review 93 (fall 2004): 49-57.

31. Peter Braestrup, The Big Story: How the American Press aridTelevision Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam andWashington (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977); Gitlin, The Whole WorldIs Watching; Daniel P. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietna(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Small, Covering Dissent.

32. Michael D. Murray, "Creating a Tradition in Broadcast News: AConversation with David Brinkley," Journalism History 21 (winter 1995):167.

33 . W. Lance Bennett, "Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations inthe United States," Journal of Communication 40 (spring 1990): 103-25.

34. "Clinton Welcomes Peaceful Protesters," Seattle Times, December1,1999, sec. A, p. 1, col. 3.

35. "Talks and Turmoil; Street Rage: Dark Parallels With AnarchistOutbreaks in Oregon," New York Times, December 3, 1999, sec. A, p. 12,


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1, col. 1; "Talks and Turmoil: The Visitors: Seeing the Fear of Free TradeMade Concrete," New York Times, Decem ber 2, 1999, sec. A, p . 17, col. 1;"Talks and Turmoil: The Hosts; Seattle is Stung, Angry and Chagrined asOpportunity Turns to Chaos," New York Times, Decem ber 2, 1999, sec. A,p. 16, col. 1; "Talks and Turmoil; The Violence: Black Masks Lead toPointed Fingers in Seattle," New York Times, December 2,1999, sec. A, p. 1,col. 3; "Talks and Turmoil; The Reaction; Internationally, Em barrassm entfor U.S.," New York Times, December 2,1999, sec. A, p . 17, col. 1; "Talks andTurmoil; Clinton's Pleas: 'Open the Meetings'," New York Times, De-cember 2, 1999, sec. A, p. 17, col. 1; "Talks and Turmoil: The Overview:President Chides W orld Trade Body In Stormy S eattle," December 2,1999,sec. A, p . 1, col. 6.

36. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, Our Media, Not Theirs: TheDemocratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (New York, NY: Seven StoriesPress, 2002).37. Gans, Deciding What's News; Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching;Hallin, The Uncensored War.38. Small, Covering Dissent39. Iyengar, 7s Anyone Responsible?40. Goldenberg, Making the Papers; Gans, Deciding What's News; Pivenand Cloward, Poor People's Movements.41. Kathleen A. Hansen, Jean Ward, Joan L. Conners, and M ark Neuzil,"Local Breaking News: Sources, Technology and News Routines," Journ-alism Quarterly 71 (autumn 1994): 561-72.42. Hansen et al., "Local Breaking News."43. Jha-Nambiar, "The Site of Coverage."44. Eric S. Fredin, "Frame Breaking and Creativity: A Frame Databasefor Hypermedia News," in Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media andOur Understanding of the Social World, ed. Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H.Gandy Jr., and August E. Grant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, 2001), 269-93.45. David Nicholas and Paul Huntington, "Evaluating the Use ofNewspaper Web Sites Logs," The International Journal on MediaManagement (summer 2000): 78-88; Xiaopeng Wang and Ying Sun, "TheInternet's Influence on Newspaper's Agenda: A Content Analysis ofNews Coverage in the New York Times, 1999-2003" (paper presented atthe annual meeting of AEJMC, San Antonio, TX, 2005); Kim H art, "InBoxJournalism," American Journalism Review 27 (winter 2006): 58-63;46. Jha-Nambiar, "The Site of C overage."47. Coy Callison, "Media Relations and the Internet: How Fortune 500Company Web Sites Assist Journalists in News Gathering," PublicRelations Review 29 (March 2003): 29-41; Jae-Hwa Shin and Glen T.Cameron, "The Interplay of Professional and Cultural Factors in the

Online Source-Reporter Relationship," Journalism Studies 4 (May 2003):253-73.


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Exploring Internet Influence on the Coverage of Social Protest

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