Making their mark? How protest sparks, surfs and sustains media issue attention

Media attention is both an important outcome and a resource for protest groups. This paper examines media-movement dynamics using television news coverage of 1,277 protests in Belgium (2003-2019). We situate protest coverage in media issue attention cycles and scrutinize whether features of protest or rather media issue attention fluctuations are key for protest’s agenda-setting effect. Our results show that while most protest fails to alter the attention cycle, a considerable share of protests is followed by a significant increase in media issue attention, especially when surfing issue attention already on the rise. Overall, media issue attention cycles rather than protest features affect protest’s agenda setting effect, suggesting that protest agenda-setting is more a matter of exploiting discursive opportunities than of forcing one’s issue on the media agenda by signaling newsworthiness. These findings have serious implications for our understanding of protest group agency in news making and agenda-setting.