From disruptive protests to disrupted news frames: Comparing German news on climate protests

This paper examines how news frames on disruptive climate protests differ from coverage of conventional protests in news outlets with different political leanings. Analyzing 6632 articles from 21 ideologically diverse German news sources between January 2022 and May 2023, we apply Word2Vec for semantic mapping, emotion classifiers, and qualitative evaluations to assess the frames present in the coverage of climate movements, and the anger attached to these frames. Comparing the more disruptive protests of the group “The Last Generation” and the more conventional protest movement “Fridays for Future”, we find that coverage of “Fridays for Future” varies predictably across the ideological spectrum: Right-wing outlets present protesters as extreme or criminal, while other outlets make reference to climate justice within their coverage of the protests, thereby following the movement’s own framing. When covering the more disruptive “Last Generation”, the entire news landscape engages in an emotionally-charged debate, asking whether the protesters are extremists or criminals, while barely discussing their actual demands. Amid an increasingly affectively polarized media debate on disruptive climate protests, left- and right-wing media remain divided in their evaluations of the protests, but focus on criminality and extremism rather than climate justice. The findings should serve as a reminder to journalists of their responsibility to carefully reflect the frames through which they cover protest movements.