The Public Nuisance Paradigm: Changes in Mass Media Coverage of Political Protest since the 1960s

This study examined coverage of protests in five major newspapers in the United States between 1967 and 2007, and found that during that time period, protests were depicted as a nuisance. Such depictions are attributed to the rise of a “public nuisance” paradigm in coverage of protests, theorized to be linked to an increased conservatism in America, and driven by the notion that protests are a bothersome interruption of everyday activities, as well as ineffective and unpatriotic. Discussion of protests as nuisances increased substantially across time, and ideologically liberal protests were treated as nuisances more often than were conservative ones.