The Mediation Model: How Non-Moderate Nonhuman Animal Advocacy Organizations Get the Media Coverage They Want

Abstract

In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a marked increase in non-moderate, or “radical,” non-human animal advocacy organizations. Social movement scholars argued that these organizations have greater difficulty than “moderate” ones in receiving substantial news coverage. But forms of substantive news coverage have increased for both moderate and non-moderate animal advocacy organizations. To address this, media analyses were conducted using content coding of The New York Times articles from 1946–2011. Logistic regression and qualitative, comparative analyses examined the conditions under which both moderate and non-moderate organizations had their demands in news coverage. Aligned with an augmented political mediation model, the findings indicated that non-moderate organizations are more likely to get substantive coverage when they target non-governmental entities on a local level through “assertive collective action.” The conclusion was that non-human animal advocacy organizations that have radical goals or tactics do not compromise the quality of media coverage in the long-term.