The following essay will explore how social protest groups are portrayed and represented within Irish mainstream media. I will examine past research on media coverage of social protests to demonstrate what is known as the protest paradigm, “a set of news coverage patterns that typifies mainstream media coverage” which “generally disparages protesters and hinders their role as vital actors on the political stage. (McLeod, 2017, P1)
I will present research that demonstrates that “although Irish daily papers are rarely overtly party political, centre right politics dominate” (Meade, 2008, P331).