How does media coverage influence the effective exercise of the legal right to protest?

The thesis will investigate the under-researched issue of how media coverage impacts the legal right to protest and public perception of that right. It will also evaluate the extent to which technological changes in news delivery and consumption affect those rights.
Peaceful protest is an essential part of democracy. It Is protected by rights to freedom of expression and assembly as a collective, expressive act. The media's ability to monitor and report protest is recognised by the UN Human Rights Committee as essential to effective exercise of these rights. However, rather than enabling protestors' expressive rights, media coverage has often distorted and misrepresented protest, particularly by over-emphasising violence and drama. Recent research had largely focussed on this issue from the perspective of journalistic practises or protestor tactics. By evaluating media coverage using a human rights law framework, the proposed study would add a previously neglected layer to this discussion.
The proposed study aims to evaluate the media's role in facilitating protest rights, through a mixed methods study of coverage of Extinction Rebellion protests from 2018 -2020. It will evaluate how the media communicate the legitimacy and legality of protest tactics and the potential this has to influence public and state understanding and response. Whilst focussing on coverage of Extinction Rebellion, this proposed study aims to contribute more generally to the under-researched issue of media's role in the facilitation of protest rights
Extinction Rebellion's tactics of disruption and civil disobedience make this a rich case study for these issues. As well as general principles of protestors' rights, including the right to protest in a chosen manner and location, they raise more complex issues of civil disobedience, which may be both illegal under UK law and democratically legitimate. Media court reporting (or lack thereof) of criminal prosecutions of protestors form part of the relevant discourse.
Much previous research has studied coverage of either a short protest campaign or every protest in a chosen location and timeframe. Extinction Rebellion's media coverage since 2018 is a longer protest discourse, analysis of which could illuminate development of this discourse over time. Public perception and government response to Extinction Rebellion appears to have changed during the protest campaign and this study would analyse the media's role in this change.
The proposed study would also contribute to recent academic debate as to how the "protest paradigm" of media coverage has been disrupted by the rise of alternative, online and international media. Extinction Rebellion's actions range from transnational to local. Resultant media coverage has come from local, national and international sources; mainstream, online and alternative. Analysis of this coverage provides an opportunity to assess if alternative media sources have changed the discourse about protest rights.
The proposed study would use a combination of quantitative content and framing analysis and qualitative critical discourse analysis to investigate these issues and consider them in the context of the state's positive obligation to facilitate protest rights.