This paper presents a dynamic analysis of the general structure of protest media agendas and their variation across media, demonstration, organisational and political contexts. It uses a dataset of 46 demonstrations in 9 countries, covering the period between 2009 and 2013, collected through the research project Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualising Contestation (www.protestsurvey.eu). We use time series cross sectional models to consider changes in media attention linked to specific demonstration-, organisational- and media contexts. We test the effects of variables such as event size, the presence of a counter-demonstration, behaviour of protestors/police, and attributes of the organisation responsible for staging the demonstration. The findings demonstrate the importance of the context of demonstration via the degree to which particular factors impact on the media agenda, and crucially whether these contextual factors have lasting effects on media attention or are focused on the week of the demonstration, decaying soon after.
