Climate activism in the Portuguese press The case of the newspaper PÚBLICO
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Abstract
Over recent years, the Portuguese climate movement has been progressively consolidating its presence in the political sphere and media space. Featuring in news channels is frequently a goal actively pursued by social movements, especially due to their influence on the public perceptions. Given the media’s role in the creation and consolidation of social representations, and the lack of data available on climate activism coverage in the Portuguese media, this study aimed to assess the representations and contextualization of climate activists in the Portuguese press. Our contribution to this understanding relied on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the evolution of climate activism coverage, the representation profiles of activists, and some (de)legitimisation indicators, such as those directly associated with the protest paradigm – namely the opportunity for self-representation, the characterization of activism as a nuisance, and the use of statements by authority figures. The analysis of 175 articles published online in the newspaper PÚBLICO revealed a preferential framing of the activist, who often has the opportunity for self-representation. Furthermore, and contrarily to what has been described in other international studies, the newspaper attributed negative representation profiles exclusively to foreign activists and the data revealed a predominance of the student-activist profile, instead of the nuisance framing.
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