Laura Garcia Rodriguez Blancas will present her research on Tuesday 17 February at 1pm in G1-04, Gillingham Building, Medway campus.

Laura Garcia Rodriguez Blancas PhD candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant Mainstream news coverage of social movements: beyond protests and demonstrations.

Laura Garcia Rodriguez Blancas comments:

‘My research looks at how the news agenda that drives mainstream media as well as other newsroom factors frame, and sometimes limit, their coverage of social movements. Driven by their timely, and sometimes rushed, reporting on public demonstrations (protests, marches, strikes, industrial action) journalists can sometimes overlook contextual information that would portray a social movement accurately.

‘Social movements exist beyond just protests and demonstrations and my research is trying to figure out where these stories are lost. My proposed case studies include bloggers who write for or about social movements and eventually get used as sources by mainstream journalists.

‘I intend to compare the original stories they write and how information gets filtered out in publication in mainstream media. This alters the narrative of social movements that people read in newspapers or watch on TV. I am generally interested in how journalists cover and interact with social movements and activists.’