Lecture 03 | Relationship between Media and Social Movements

Since protest events are not in resonance with certain amount of newsworthiness in the eyes of media workers and organisations, they do not come with a certain amount of predetermined  newsworthiness. This is how attitude of media towards social movements is often justified by news workers. Studies on social movements show that only one feature is successful in gaining media coverage and that is size of demonstration. More the number of demonstrators/protestors, more coverage is obtained by social movements. Apart from this no other features of help social movements in obtaining media attention.  

Studies throughout the world have indicated towards limited capacity of social movements to influence mass media and gaining coverage. The main reasons behind this attitude of mainstream media towards social movement are: (1) media's selection and descriptive bias while covering protest; (2) news-making routines and journalistic news values; (3) news workers' reliance on dramatic and visible events and ; (4) journalists' reliance on authoritative sources. 

Now we are going to discuss these aspects individually.

Firstly, in the past media was considered to be the mirror of society, however a considerable number of studies showed that media presents news selectively. Descriptive bias refers to media organisation's differing definitions of news in terms of their ideology, political and social leanings. In summary, we can say that media organisation decide what is and what not a news. 

Secondly, news-making routines and journalistic news values play a greater role in determining newsworthiness of a protest event. Firstly, news workers have a set routine which can only be disturbed in case of emergency or a great disaster in a country. If a journalist comes to know another important incident has happened while covering the protest, he will most likely leave protest and cover another event/incident. Secondly, journalistic news values often focus on authoritarian sources for information, magnitude of an incident/event etc. A greater body of studies also show that under-privileged sources are often ignored or given less space and time in the mass media. 

Thirdly, news workers invariably rely on visible or dramatic events and authoritative sources. Since social movements are serious phenomenon, very rarely they produce any dramatic event which may succeed in gaining media attention. 

Finally, as already stated, social movements present an alternative world view which is why movement actors are always against the authorities and no authorities are found in their support or with them. These two are also main reasons behind lack of coverage of social movement by mainstream media. In line with this, an amount of competition between different media organisations also play a greater role in ignoring social movements. 

In summary, the connection or relationship between mainstream media and social movements is often called and considered asymmetrical by media as well as social movements scholars. Activists need to be visible in the mass media and, quite contrarily, mass media do not rely on social movements for production of news.