New value consensus or value conflicts? Comparing journalistic coverage of anti-COVID-19 lockdown and anti-war protests in France, Italy and Spain

The war in Ukraine triggered a massive shock to European markets, which were still recovering from the pandemic. Both events, the pandemic and the war, were responded with emergency measures by European governments that were supported by overwhelming majorities within the parliamentary spectrum, and in some cases even very broad coalition governments. Through emergency legislation, decision makers imposed sometimes very harsh and controversial measures: first, the lockdown, and only two years later, the military support for Ukraine. In absence of major partisan opposition, both emergencies restricted the expression of protest. In this context, we ask: how is protest finding expression and channelled during the emergency. To investigate the framing of discontent during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, we do not study mobilisation strategies of relevant protest actors, but rather turn to the public arena of contestation where protest claims are selectively amplified and interpreted. We opt for a comparative analysis of the intermediary role played by journalists during the emergencies in giving salience to value conflicts that are fought between overwhelming majorities and marginalised protest actors. Precisely because majorities defend a broad democratic consensus, the voice of dissensus gains a particular visibility. In confronting the consensus on democratic values, protest actors seek new ways of contesting liberal values freedom of choice and of expression in opposition to what they perceive as an oppressive political consensus. Journalism maintains a crucial role in mediating and also in marginalising protest movements. For this reason, a comparative analysis of the ways different newspapers present the protests becomes useful to understand how the press has interpreted and enacted its intermediary role within the public sphere in such a delicate moment of value conflicts around core democratic principles