Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 17 Jul 2008
Validity and Media-Derived Protest Event Data: Examining Relative Coverage Tendencies in Mexican News Media *
Validity and Media-Derived Protest Event Data: Examining Relative Coverage Tendencies in Mexican News Media *
Page Range: 147 – 164
This essay engages the debate over the validity of media-derived protest data through an assessment of event coverage for three Mexico news sources. With a focus on "relative"—as opposed to "absolute"—coverage tendencies, it is argued that certain coverage tendencies in news sources can be identified and, in turn, incorporated as controls into more substantive analyses of protest phenomena. Specifically, this analysis finds that that, for the Mexico media, claims that coverage is representative of all protest events is dubious with respect to the overall population of specific events and to the geographic distribution of events. At the same time, it is shown that tendencies driven by regional biases, chronology, event size, event targets, and event issues can be exposed and identified through a simple comparison of the principal media source to one or more others.
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