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Paper short abstract

This longitudinal study shows how French newspapers framed three major protest movements through shifting negative lenses that constrained grassroots agency. Over 15 years, limited supportive frames reveal how media power shaped and restricted possibilities for solidarity.

Paper long abstract

This longitudinal study examines how seven major French national newspapers—Le Monde, Le Figaro, Aujourd’hui en France, La Croix, L’Humanité, Libération, and Les Échos—framed three major protest movements in contemporary France: the Banlieue Riots (2005), Nuit Debout (2016), and the Gilets Jaunes (2018–19). Drawing on a quantitative content analysis of news articles across a 15-year period, the study assesses protest visibility and 40 framing categories derived from the literature on media representations of social movements, and evenly split between positive and negative sentiment. The analysis is situated within broader critiques of protest reporting in France, including overreliance on official sources, the marginalisation of structural grievances, and declining trust in the press. Findings show that French protest coverage is consistently more negative than positive, though the balance and logic of negativity shift over time. In the Banlieue Riots, negative framing is dominated by a rigid law-and-order and accountability logic. By Nuit Debout, this evolves into a more political and ideological critique structured around cynicism, radicalisation, and diminished emphasis on security. During the Gilets Jaunes, negativity becomes hybrid, combining the blame-oriented lens of 2005 with the political mistrust of 2016. Positive frames increase across the cycles but remain largely emotional rather than structurally supportive. Despite clear ideological differences—where left-leaning outlets emphasise solidarity and social inequality, and right-leaning and financial papers prioritise stability and economic disruption—the press as a whole adheres to a common moral framework that views protest as legitimate but bounded by expectations of social stability.