Pamela E. Oliver
Professor of Sociology

Soc 626 News as Data, News as Actor

News coverage of movements and repression in shaping movement cycles.

  (If you are doing reading notes, please do NOT waste your time taking pages and pages of notes about all these articles.  Instead use the abstracts a guides to what the main points are and then mostly “read” the tables and graphs and focus on the summaries of the results.  I will go over this in class and highlight the main points.)

Read the 4 *’d articles for November 20.  Read the first two with *’s, and for the two Oliver articles, skim them more lightly trying to see if you can get the main points, which I will discuss more in class.

  • *GJ26. The Media In The Unmaking Of The New Left (From The Whole World Is Watching): Todd Gitlin. [My notes on Gitlin are in a file for Nov 29]
  • My lecture notes: My lecture notes (document file, outline only, 9 pages) PDF of slide shots, includes lots of graphs, big file

Articles about factors predicting whether protests and demonstrations get news coverage.  I will summarize the findings from these articles in lecture. If you are doing pre-class reading notes, you should focus on the RESULTS of studies, what were their FINDINGS, not on the literature review at the beginning of the article. That is, just skim and do NOT take notes on the literature review. Focus on the data. You will also want to review the lecture slides, as soon as I get them posted.

  1. * McCarthy, J. D., C. McPhail, et al. (1996). “Images of Protest: Dimensions of Selection Bias in Media Coverage of Washington Demonstrations, 1982 and 1991.” American Sociological Review 61(3): 478-499. PDF file The first study of its type.
  2. (*) Pamela E. Oliver and Daniel J. Myers. “How Events Enter the Public Sphere: Conflict, Location and Sponsorship in Local Newspaper Coverage of Public Events.” American Journal of Sociology 105: 38-87. 1999. PDF file Legible copy of figures (those in the article copy are illegible)This one assesses coverage of protest events relative to others: conflict gets you in the news, location and sponsorship matter. Non-conflictual message events have very low rates of coverage.
  3. (*) “Political Processes and Local Newspaper Coverage of Protest Events: From Selection Bias to Triadic Interactions” (Pamela E. Oliver and Gregory M. Maney) American Journal of Sociology 106 (2 September) 2000: 463-505 PDF file. This one examines only protest events: ties to institutional politics increase coverage, but events compete with the legislature for space in the news hole.
  4. Mueller, Carol. “International Press Coverage of East German Protest Events, 1989″ American Sociological Review; 1997, 62, 5, Oct, 820-832. Comparison of six nations’ coverage in light of media selection models.  PDF file  Proximity to the event mattes.
  5. Mueller, Carol. “Media Measurement Models of Protest Event Data.”Mobilization; 1997, 2, 2, Sept, 165-184. Mueller, Media measurement models of protest event data, A theoretical article that gives a very clear review of the relevant issues.
  6. Almeida and Lichbach, “To the Internet, From the Internet: Comparative Media Coverage of Transnational Protests.” Mobilization In Library Reserves Compares news coverage in different sources.

Articles about how the media aid or deter mobilization 

(Again, I’ll be summarizing results from this work)

  1. Sampedro, Victor The Media Politics of Social Protest. Mobilization; 1997, 2, 2, Sept, 185-205. Spain, media opportunities usually coincide with political opportunities, but sometimes there is a chance in the media. Sampedro in library reserves,
  2. Roscigno, V. J. and W. F. Danaher (2001). “Media and Mobilization: The Case of Radio and Southern Textile Worker Insurgency, 1929 to 1934.”American Sociological Review 66(1): 21-48. A nice piece, showing that worker-oriented radio stations facilitated insurgency. Available in JSTOR.
  3. Smith, J., J. D. McCarthy, et al. (2001). “From Protest to Agenda Building: Description Bias in Media Coverage of Protest Events in Washington, D.C.” Social Forces 79(4): 1397-1423. Protest coverage focus on events, not issues, may undermine movement agendas. PDF file
  4. Rohlinger, D. A. (2002). “Framing the Abortion Debate: Organizational Resources, Media Strategies, and Movement-Countermovement Dynamics.” The Sociological Quarterly 43(4): 479-507. How opposed SMOs, the National Organization for Women (NOW) & Concerned Women for America (CWA), get media coverage during critical moments of the abortion debate. Strategic construction of frames, responses to opponents, success in getting coverage.
  5. Wisler, D. and M. Giugni (1999). “Under the Spotlight: The Impact of Media Attention on Protest Policing.” Mobilization 4(2): 171-187.
  6. Davenport, C. and M. Eads (2001). “Cued to Coerce or Coercing Cues? An Exploration of Dissident Rhetoric and Its Relationship to Political Repression.” Mobilization 6(2): 151-171.