Explaining Variation in SDS News Treatment

• In Event: Political and Other External Consequences of Social Movements

Abstract

Why do radical social movements sometimes attract helpful coverage within a mainstream news environment? Prior scholarship has focused on narrow snapshots of damaging protest coverage while overlooking the full range of non-institutional action shaping media portrayals. This paper examines how such actions influenced variation in national newspaper coverage of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1965 to 1970. Drawing from the Political Organizations in the News (PONS) dataset, I analyze 1,489 articles from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. Using computational methods and logistic regression, I test how specific movement actions drive variation across demands, quotes, and journalistic stance. Various protest forms, including demonstrations, occupations, and riots, produced diverse stances and substantive attention to demands, while meetings did little to amplify claims. Where earlier research treats protest as generating unhelpful treatment, I find that specific protest forms yield distinct and at times more substantive news treatment.

Author

• Grey Rochon, University of California-Irvine