The Use of Newspaper Data in the Study of Collective Action

Studying collective action with newspaper accounts of protest events, rare only 20 years ago, has become commonplace in the past decade. A critical literature has accompanied the growth of protest event analysis. The literature has focused on selection bias—particularly which subset of events are co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of sociology 2004-01, Vol.30 (1), p.65-80
Main Authors: Earl, Jennifer, Martin, Andrew, McCarthy, John D., Soule, Sarah A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Collective Action
Data collection
Datasets
Demonstrations & protests
Institutions and Culture
Journalism
Labor protests
Mass Media Images
Media coverage
Methodology (Data Analysis)
Minority & ethnic violence
News content
News Coverage
Political protests
Political sociology
Protest Movements
Research biases
Research design
Researchers
Riots
Sampling techniques
Selection bias
Social activism
Social movements
Social movements. Revolutions
Sociology
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Summary:Studying collective action with newspaper accounts of protest events, rare only 20 years ago, has become commonplace in the past decade. A critical literature has accompanied the growth of protest event analysis. The literature has focused on selection bias—particularly which subset of events are covered—and description bias—notably, the veracity of the coverage. The "hard news" of the event, if it is reported, tends to be relatively accurate. However, a newspaper's decision to cover an event at all is influenced by the type of event, the news agency, and the issue involved. In this review, we discuss approaches to detecting bias, as well as ways to factor knowledge about bias into interpretations of protest event data.
ISSN:0360-0572
1545-2115
DOI:10.1146/annurev.soc.30.012703.110603