{"title":"CATALOGING PROTEST: NEWSPAPERS, NEXIS UNI, OR TWITTER?*","authors":"Lesley J. Wood, Dyllan Goldstein","doi":"10.17813/1086-671x-28-3-343","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"What is the best source for tracking protest activity? Newspaper sources remain dominant, but other options are tempting. This article compares three differently sourced catalogs of protest events in Toronto from July 15 to September 15, 2020. The widely discussed Movement for Black Lives and housing justice cycles of protest are visible in all three catalogs, but apart from this, the field of protest they reveal is very different. While the coverage by the newspaper with the largest circulation, the Toronto Star, shows Toronto protest as state-centered, domestic, and progressive, other catalogs that include television, radio, and social media content reveal a more diverse, fragmented, and globalized protest field. Catalogs sourced from Nexis Uni and Twitter show the significant presence of diasporic protest. These observations suggest new limits to relying on mainstream newspapers for representing the full array of protest activity. We recommend that, moving forward, researchers experiment with media aggregators to incorporate sources such as television coverage and social media into their research while remaining aware of the additional challenges such data generate.","PeriodicalId":47309,"journal":{"name":"Mobilization","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Mobilization","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671x-28-3-343","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
What is the best source for tracking protest activity? Newspaper sources remain dominant, but other options are tempting. This article compares three differently sourced catalogs of protest events in Toronto from July 15 to September 15, 2020. The widely discussed Movement for Black Lives and housing justice cycles of protest are visible in all three catalogs, but apart from this, the field of protest they reveal is very different. While the coverage by the newspaper with the largest circulation, the Toronto Star, shows Toronto protest as state-centered, domestic, and progressive, other catalogs that include television, radio, and social media content reveal a more diverse, fragmented, and globalized protest field. Catalogs sourced from Nexis Uni and Twitter show the significant presence of diasporic protest. These observations suggest new limits to relying on mainstream newspapers for representing the full array of protest activity. We recommend that, moving forward, researchers experiment with media aggregators to incorporate sources such as television coverage and social media into their research while remaining aware of the additional challenges such data generate.
期刊介绍:
Mobilization: An International Quarterly is the premier journal of research specializing in social movements, protests, insurgencies, revolutions, and other forms of contentious politics. Mobilization was first published in 1996 to fill the need for a scholarly review of research that focused exclusively with social movements, protest and collective action. Mobilization is fully peer-reviewed and widely indexed. A 2003 study, when Mobilization was published semiannually, showed that its citation index rate was 1.286, which placed it among the top ten sociology journals. Today, Mobilization is published four times a year, in March, June, September, and December. The editorial board is composed of thirty internationally recognized scholars from political science, sociology and social psychology. The goal of Mobilization is to provide a forum for global, scholarly dialogue. It is currently distributed to the top international research libraries and read by the most engaged scholars in the field. We hope that through its wide distribution, different research strategies and theoretical/conceptual approaches will be shared among the global community of social movement scholars, encouraging a collaborative process that will further the development of a cumulative social science.