Mediated Representations of Protest in Latin America: A Comparative Perspective 2000-2024

Social change largely depends on the public perceptions of political initiatives such as those driving protest. However, only a very small proportion of individuals are directly exposed to protest and most learn about it through media representations which largely follow a “protest paradigm” that prioritises frames of security, disorder, and threat. This paper studies attitudes towards protest and political challengers in Latin America in the 21st century, considering that mass media not only affects, but also reflects social perceptions. Computational text extraction techniques were used to develop an original dataset covering more than 18,000 events in ten countries and to identify media frames associated with the protest paradigm in each news story. The comparative evidence on representations of protest shows variation within and between countries that follow changes in democratic quality and the challenges brought about by the terrorism, crises, environmental challenges, and minority claims in national contexts. Event attributes such as government responses, type of staging organisations, and protester demands, provide granular evidence on how government critics and minorities challenging the status quo receive the most negative framing. Implications of public perceptions of protest are discussed in light of the challenges for democratic openness and political inequalities in Latin America.