The Protest Paradigm Across Borders: How Indonesian Media Framed Domestic and Foreign (Nepal) Protests in 2025

This study analyzes how Indonesian online media frame domestic and international protests through the lens of the protest paradigm. It examines two major protest waves that occurred in August-September 2025 in Indonesia and Nepal, which followed similar patterns of escalation. The analysis focuses on protest coverage in three major Indonesian online news portals Detik.com, Kompas.com, and CNNIndonesia.com using quantitative content analysis. The observation period covers the Indonesian protests (15 August–15 September 2025) and the Nepal protests (5–15 September 2025). The dataset consists of 1,154 news articles (Indonesia: n = 856, proportionally sampled; Nepal: n = 298, total population). The analysis includes four variables: news framing (riot, confrontation, spectacle, debate), sourcing (dominant protester, dominant official, balanced, no source cited), marginalization/legitimization devices (violence of protesters, violence of police, peacefulness), and episodic thematic reporting. The findings show that Indonesian online media employ the protest paradigm in covering protests in both Indonesia and Nepal. In reporting domestic protests in Indonesia, coverage is dominated by confrontation framing, greater reliance on official sources, and a stronger emphasis on protester violence. In contrast, coverage of the Nepal protests demonstrates a greater use of debate framing, more frequent inclusion of protester voices, and a higher proportion of thematic reporting. Although riot and spectacle frames are also present in the Nepal case, the overall coverage provides relatively greater space for protest narratives and contextual explanations compared with coverage of domestic protests.