A Comparative Study Of The Coverage Of Canada’s Freedom Convoy Protest In The Globe And Mail And National Post

In January and February 2022,a protest movement,dubbed "Freedom Convoy 2022",engulfing the capital city,Ottawa,and borders,has gained significant attention from the media.Focusing on Canada’s two major national newspapers,The Globe and Mail and National Post,the study has invoked the theory of "protest paradigm",and conducted a comprehensive content analysis that combines quantitative and qualitative methods to unveil the similarities and differences in the two newspapers’ adoption of frames and representation of protest issues.The "protest paradigm" refers to the journalists’routinized delegitimization of protest movements,through using delegitimizing frames and marginalizing the protest issues that deviate from the mainstream political values,for maintaining the status quo.It has been found that both newspapers adopted all five delegitimizing frames,and employed the "negative impact" frame as the master frame,which points to a shared propensity to delegitimize the protest as chaotic and disruptive.Besides,both newspapers’ coverage gravitated towards denouncing the antiestablishment elements.Moreover,National Post also adopted the legitimizing frames in a sizeable portion of articles compared with The Globe and Mail,and the former was also more inclined to sympathize with protesters’ grievances over vaccine mandates,pandemic restrictions,and Trudeau administration.Furthermore,the study has deciphered the factors that shaped their coverage of the protest.On the one hand,as mainstream news media,both newspapers consensually condemned the protesters’ anti-establishment appeals in order to exclude what was perceived to wreck the fundamental principles of democracy from the public agenda,which signifies their endeavor to maintain the status quo.On the other hand,influenced by their disparate political leanings,National Post,the more ideologically conservative newspaper,was more inclined to identify with the protesters’ narrative surrounding such issues as vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions,while The Globe and Mail tended to critique their agendas.Notably,the controversy in their coverage has echoed the debates among Canada’s major political parties,especially the Liberal and Conservative parties,on related issues,thereby reproducing and amplifying the elite narratives.All in all,through a comparative study of the coverage of the protest in two mainstream news outlets,the research could contribute to a better understanding of the journalistic paradigm in protest coverage.Additionally,by giving due attention to the Freedom Convoy protest and analyzing Canadian mainstream media’s coverage,this paper could provide insights into the current political landscape of Canada.