| Abstract: | In 2013, small demonstrations against bus fares evolved into a series of large protests expressing generalized dissatisfaction with leftist president Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. Communication research has long examined the “protest paradigm,” a pattern of news coverage delegitimizing social movements. The Brazilian context provided a chance to assess the extent to which the paradigm holds when protests take on a conservative elite-supported narrative contesting the government. Through a quantitatively driven mixed-methods approach combining content analysis and interviews with mainstream journalists, this study revealed that when grievances evolved into coherent antigovernment demands, official sources from opposition parties served to legitimize the movement. As such, this study departed from an understanding of protest coverage as paradigmatic toward a complex view of the relationship between protestors and the press. Findings showed that when elite opposition groups supported protests, journalistic norms and routines validated demonstrations. |
