ABSTRACT

There is an established tradition in social movement research to study protests through event datasets constructed from newspaper data. However, studies evaluating the magnitude of bias in newspaper reporting on protests have been largely confined to Western Europe and North America and have predominantly focused on time-invariant bias. I extend the past scholarship by analyzing the bias in online newspapers’ reports on protest events in Ukraine prior to and following the Maidan protests, focusing on issue attention cycles. I find that the number of mentions per protest event in the national media dropped after Maidan, while the coverage of ideological protests increased, indicating an issue attention cycle. The regional sources displayed less bias; however, they over-reported protests against separatism and Russian intervention. This presents researchers with a trade-off between using selective national outlets which adhere more to journalism standards and less selective regional outlets featuring more unpredictable patterns of bias.

摘要

社交运动研究中已有一项传统，可通过根据报纸数据构建的事件数据集来研究抗议活动。但是，评估报纸对抗议活动的偏见程度的研究主要限于西欧和北美，并且主要集中在时不变偏见上。我通过分析在线报纸在Maidan抗议前后发生的乌克兰抗议活动的报道中的偏见来扩展过去的奖学金，重点是关注问题的关注周期。我发现，在迈丹之后，全国媒体每场抗议活动的提及次数有所下降，而意识形态抗议活动的报道却有所增加，表明了关注问题的周期。区域来源显示出较少的偏见；但是，他们夸大了抗议分裂主义和俄罗斯干预的抗议活动。