From the Fringes to the Mass Media: Organization, Strategy and why Contemporary Far-Right Protests Receive News Coverage in Europe

Why do far-right protests receive coverage by mainstream newspapers? In the aftermath of the 2015 asylum policy crisis, protests by far-right groups are becoming common in the streets of major European cities. Still, scholars of social movements have devoted little attention to the comparative study of the determinants of far-right protest news visibility in Europe. This article bridges existing research on the far right, social movements and political communication to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest news visibility based on organizational and strategic factors. The hypotheses are appraised with logistic regressions based on the novel comparative data from the project FARPE (Far-Right Protest in Europe), which includes 4,900 far-right protest events retrieved from online press releases by far-right groups and national newspapers in eleven European countries (2008-2018). Both social movement theory and political communication support our hypotheses. The analyses confirm that quality media outlets are more likely to report on younger far-right groups that can count on elected MPs, which focus on core issues like immigration, and whose protest trigger the reaction of political opponents. By illustrating how fringe movements and their ideas can make inroads into the public sphere of established democracies in Europe, the paper thus supports claims about the role of mainstream media in the rise of the far right and populism in contemporary societies.