Military Accord, Media Discord

Abstract

Although the UK and US were staunch allies before and during the Iraq War, differing sociopolitical milieus existed within the countries regarding support for the war. This cross-national content analysis compared stories on antiwar protest by leading newspapers in each country to determine if the differing sociopolitical environments were reflected in each nation's press coverage. Results indicate that the US press invoked the ‘protest paradigm’ to a greater extent than its UK counterpart by being more likely to implement marginalization techniques in its coverage of protesters. Additionally, a greater number of marginalization techniques were associated with negative overall story tone toward the protesters within US coverage when compared to UK coverage. These results underscore the importance of cross-national research in examining the generality of contemporary mass media theory.