@article{2026:thoms:climate_pr,
title = {Climate Protest—What is it good for? Linking news coverage on German climate movements and reader comments},
year = {2026},
note = {Media coverage plays a crucial role in shaping public perception of
social movements. While attention-seeking protest tactics meet media
selection criteria, they also risk distorting public perception. This
study examines the German climate protest scene by comparing two key
protest groups: Fridays for Future and Last Generation, the latter
often criticized for its disruptive protest tactics. Building on the
concept of mediatization, the protest paradigm, and agenda-setting
theory, we analyze the mediated impact of different protest strategies
on reader comments. Our quantitative content analysis includes 100
online news articles and 1,910 reader comments from three major German
news sites (2019–2023). We find that articles about Last Generation
focus more on protest actions and are less likely to prompt
discussions about the climate issue among commentators. They are also
more negative than those about Fridays for Future. However,
journalistic evaluations are not directly reflected in the
corresponding reader comments. These results suggest that
non-normative and disruptive protest strategies could harm the
discourse on climate change. Our findings are relevant for social
movements and interest groups seeking to raise awareness of socially
relevant issues such as climate protection and climate change.
Additionally, this study contributes to understanding the dynamics
between social movements, the media, and the public within the
political communication system.},
journal = {SCM Studies in Communication and Media},
pages = {402--429},
author = {Thoms, Claudia and Schrimpf, Tobias and Reich, Andreas},
volume = {15},
number = {3}
}