Right up their street? News media framing of the protest activities of far-right movement parties

Abstract

Far-right parties have increasingly emphasised their movement-like characteristics as a novel mobilisation strategy. Existing studies of these so-called ‘far-right movement parties’ have concentrated on their internal organisation and communications to understand how they mediate between a movement and party identity through their own actions. Yet research is lacking on how this identity is constructed and presented by the news media: a crucial interface between institutional politics and public opinion. This paper pursues this enquiry with a comparative analysis of the newspaper coverage of two prominent cases—the German AfD and UKIP—and asks how coverage of their increasing involvement in protests has varied cross-nationally and evolved over time. The analysis reveals the relative salience of the protest activities of the far-right, along with the associated social movement actors, issues and frames used in the reporting. It shows that far-right party protest receives a low level of attention and tends to be accompanied by delegitimising framing, particularly when associated (extremist) movements are also present. In both cases analysed, a critical juncture generated increasing attention to far-right party protest, but also more delegitimising frames. The study provides new insights into the structures and processes which influence how the media has responded to the new far-right ‘movement party’ form in Europe, with implications for our understanding of contemporary far-right mobilisation strategies.

Introduction

Far-right parties in Europe have been on a long journey towards greater accommodation from mainstream parties, voters and the mass media. In the process they have needed to strategically negotiate an ambivalent relationship with news media institutions. On the one hand, there is said to be a ‘convergence of goals’ between the two, as both populist parties and media institutions accrue mutual benefits from their interactions (Mazzoleni 2008). An increasingly prevalent populist media logic favours the spectacular and controversial content these parties provide. The rewards to the parties are in turn significant: the populist radical right have emerged and performed more strongly in contexts in which they receive more (and more favourable) media coverage (Ellinas 2010; de Jonge 2021). Yet the relationship is also often a conflictual one. Far-right actors often claim to suffer from biased media coverage—whether due to under-representation or accusations of extremism—and cite the mainstream media as one of their core enemies (Mudde 2007, p. 67). Sometimes their response to the media is aggressive, as seen in the recent revival of the Nazi-era term Lügenpresse (‘lying press’) by the AfD. At other times, they have sought to adapt their behaviour to influence their media representation and public reception.

One novel mobilisation strategy of the far-right¹ which challenges existing media representations is a newfound emphasis of their own movement-like characteristics and connections with social movement organisations. In recent years, scholars have been paying increasing attention to such interactions between political parties and social movement organisations (Borbáth and Hutter 2020; McAdam and Tarrow 2018; Castelli Gattinara and Pirro 2019), including through the formation of new hybrid ‘movement parties’ (Kitschelt 2006).² A core definitional component of this party form is the combination of activities in the electoral arena with more movement-like involvement in street protests (Pirro and Castelli Gattinara 2018, p. 367). An important interface through which this strategy is pursued, albeit one often overlooked, is the news media. Recent studies have examined how media coverage of street protests feeds into parliament (Hutter and Vliegenthart 2018), and impacts upon elections (Bremer et al. 2020). Yet existing studies of ‘movement parties’ have concentrated on their internal organisation and communication to understand how they mediate between a movement and partisan identity through their own actions (Höhne 2021; Pirro and Castelli Gattinara 2018). Focusing on parties of the far-right, this paper argues that in order to grasp the extent to which their movement-like attributes are perceived and taken into strategic consideration by other actors—parties, movements, voters—we need to examine how the media constructs and presents this identity.

As opposed to an internal organisational view of far-right movement parties (Pirro and Castelli Gattinara 2018), therefore, this paper seeks to show and explain a particular ‘external’ view of them. It examines how the news media has represented far-right ‘movement parties’ in various contexts, and poses the research question: how do the news media report upon the protest activities of far-right parties, and how does their reporting change over time? Empirically, the analysis covers two prominent cases of far-right parties that have undergone a process of ‘movementization’—the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Both have recently been analysed through the ‘movement party’ lens in the academic literature due to the close ties with protest movements and events (Caiani and Císař 2019; Hanna and Busher 2019; Schwörer 2019; Weisskircher and Berntzen 2018). The paper uses a new dataset of the news media coverage of these parties, and assesses articles regarding their involvement in protest by means of a mixed quantitative and qualitative content analysis.

Through analysis of the newspaper reporting of their protest activities of two cases of far-right movement parties, the paper demonstrates the differences in media framing in different contexts, along with the shifts taken over time and differences between newspapers of contrasting ideological leanings. The paper argues that coverage of their protest activities in national media coverage intensifies following a ‘critical juncture’ (Tarrow 2021), during which time the parties shift issue focus and associate more closely with social movements. The prominence of (extremist) movements alongside the parties in these protests is crucial to explain the degree of delegitimising framing employed by the news media. Differences between newspapers remain, sometimes with ambiguities regarding their portrayal of the protests and the moral evaluations of the parties involved. The paper contributes to existing studies of far-right party strategy, and opens avenues for further inquiries into the ‘movement party’ form through the lens of the news media.

News media framing of far-right movement parties

The mobilisation strategy of movementization by far-right parties

Movement parties, according to the influential conceptualisation of Kitschelt (2006), are parties that straddle the protest and electoral arenas. While participating in elections, they differ from regular parties due to two ‘hybrid’ dimensions: they make greater use of participatory and/or plebiscitarian organisational forms, and they are involved to a greater extent in contentious action repertoires, for example, protests (Peña 2020). As a result, these parties tend to interact more with associated social movement organisations, including through the co-organisation of protests (Borbáth and Hutter 2020), and these interactions are facilitated by their open organisational structures. While movement parties may come from both the left and right of the ideological spectrum, those on the far-right are more likely to be plebisicitarian than participatory in organisational form (Heinisch and Mazzoleni 2016, p. 227; Art 2018). Moreover, far-right movement parties tend not to arise out of social movements, but rather fit the label due to their ‘[application of] the organizational and strategic practices of social movements in the arena of party competition’ (Kitschelt 2006, p. 280).

The involvement of far-right parties in the protest arena as well as the electoral arena is a crucial component of their apparent ‘movementization’.³ Such protest activities have been interpreted as a strategic endeavour for their mobilisation purposes (Castelli Gattinara and Pirro 2019, p. 455; Froio et al. 2020, p. 8). The (macro-, meso-, micro-level) reasons behind this hybrid strategy have been explored, both in terms of far-right parties entering the protest arena (Klein and Pirro 2020; Heinze and Weisskircher 2022), as well as far-right movements entering the electoral arena (Pirro and Castelli Gattinara 2018; Fielitz 2019). Connecting with radical right subcultures facilitates discursive and organisational opportunities for parties (Mudde 2007, p. 245), and may help them to become embedded into society more generally (Heinze and Weisskircher 2021, p. 272). It is a risky strategy: while involvement in the protest arena may grant far-right parties media attention to themselves and the issues they ‘own’, it may also draw attention to associated extremist groups that repel mainstream voters.

The intensified involvement of movement parties in protest tends to take place after a ‘critical juncture’: a period of rapid social and political change which may generate more intimate and interactive relations between parties and movements (Tarrow 2022, pp. 19–23). The parties involved may alter their own character due to such linkages to the extent that they develop a hybrid ‘movement party’ character. Such a hybrid character tends to be temporary. Over time, particularly under the pressures of institutionalisation, movement parties tend to either relapse into a movement or convert fully to institutional party politics. Existing accounts of movement parties and their internal organisation frequently show that they take the latter path. Movement-like repertoires tend to decline over time with organisational development and institutional adaptation (Rodríguez-Teruel et al. 2016; Heinze and Weisskircher 2021, pp. 270–271).⁴ Yet studies that instead focus on the parties’ communication show that amidst such a transformation these parties continue to proclaim the distinctiveness of their movement-like practices, such as participatory processes (Mosca 2014; Deseriis 2020). In this divergence between the party’s movement-like character in practice and what they communicate, we see how the ‘movement party’ concept is also a discursive construction.

Media coverage of far-right party movementization

A purely internal perspective on the movement-like character of these parties, whether through analysis of their organisation or communications, has a significant limitation: it fails to inform us of the extent to which the ‘movement party’ conception reaches beyond those within the party’s immediate orbit (e.g. members, sympathisers, social media followers) to the wider public. According to agenda-setting theory, the public perception of an object (an issue, party, or whatever else) is strongly influenced by the attributes which are deemed newsworthy by the mass media (McCombes et al. 2000). As Walter Lippman (1922) put it, the media act as a bridge between “the world outside and the pictures in our heads”. Therefore, to grasp the real world relevance of the ‘movementization’ strategy, in terms of its entry into the considerations of the public and other strategic actors, we need to study the media coverage of the movement-like attributes of the far-right.

To do so, this paper examines the media framing of far-right party protest activities. Media framing is the selection of particular aspects of a news item, and their resulting elevation in salience, which promotes a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation (Entman 1993, p. 52). The media framing of far-right parties has been noted to shift over time. For example, the media moved from describing the supporters of the Dutch far-right Centre Party as ‘racists’ in the 1980s to protestors with legitimate grievances in the early 1990s (Mudde 2007, p. 226). More broadly, the media increasingly tends to describe far-right parties as instead ‘populist’, with the effect of their core ideology being overlooked and euphemised (Brown and Mondon 2020).

The use of an alternative framing may be driven from within the parties. The willingness of far-right party elites to publicly portray themselves as a ‘movement (party)’ supports the idea that it is a strategic endeavour to shape perceptions, for various purposes. For example, it might be a means to burnish their anti-establishment credentials, as with the 2010 re-launch of the Norwegian FrP as a ‘protest movement’ (Jupskås 2016). It might also be a means to mobilise voters outside of their ideological niche. AfD leader Alexander Gauland and other party elites have recently asserted that it is a ‘movement party’, to emphasise its close links to the anti-system (but not always radical right) Querdenken protesters (Anon 2020). Alternatively, an emphasis on a party’s movement-like attributes may form part of ongoing attempts by the far-right to mainstream their reputation (Akkerman et al. 2016). This could involve presenting their involvement in mass protest as standing with ‘the people’, or their internal procedures (the other side of the movement party concept) as showing their transparent and democratic character. Thus, to the extent that the active ‘movementization’ of the far-right is an attempt to shape public perceptions, their framing by the mass media is a particularly crucial strategic concern.

In research on the far-right, media frames are more commonly researched in studies of the issues they are said to ‘own’, for example, immigration (Weaver and Scacco 2013; Boykoff and Laschever 2011; Rafail and McCarthy 2018). The prominence of such issues in the media has been shown to have a significant impact on support for these parties (Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart 2007). Existing research has also examined the media framing of far-right movements, for example the Tea Party (Weaver and Scacco 2013; Boykoff and Laschever 2011; Rafail and McCarthy 2018), and far-right leaders (Araújo and Prior 2021; Bos et al. 2011). It has also examined the determinants of media coverage of grass-roots far-right protests (Castelli Gattinara and Froio 2018). Research into the media coverage of far-right parties has instead tended to focus on cross-national comparison of the amount of exposure they receive, and whether its content is positive or negative (Ellinas 2010; de Jonge 2021). Analyses of the media’s framing of far-right parties’ involvement in protests remain lacking.

Expectations for the news media framing of far-right party protest

Why would the news media portray far-right parties as ‘movement parties’ in their reporting? In contemporary commercialised media systems, the extent of coverage devoted to a particular topic is rooted in the (commercial) value that news media institutions derive from its reporting, which leads them to favour dramatic and sensational content (Mazzoleni 2008). As a result, there are good reasons to expect the ‘movement party’ turn of the far-right—whether in terms of their novel organisational processes or, as is the focus of this paper, their protest activities—to be generally downplayed. The other competing portrayals of such parties—related to their distinctive radical issues, populist discourse and extremist anti-democratic orientation—already provide much commercially exploitable content for the media. Moreover, work on the ‘protest paradigm’ shows the tendency for media coverage to neglect protest, whether through obscuring the concerns expressed in such activities or employing negative frames to marginalise the associated actors (Weaver and Scacco 2013). We expect, therefore, that the protest activities of far-right parties to be relatively neglected by the media.

H1

protest activities of far-right parties are of low salience to news media (in comparison to other related topics).

We could also expect the media framing of these parties’ activities to vary, depending on the nature of the protest events in focus. The protest actions of far-right social movements have been shown to receive more media coverage when they are more controversial and conflictual (Castelli Gattinara and Froio 2018). As a result, we could expect that the media framing of protest activities will be shift as links intensify between the parties and far-right movements who make use of confrontational and violent tactics (Ellinas 2010). After a critical juncture which increases links between far-right parties and movements, therefore, we could expect that reporting of far-right party involvement in protest events will increase, along with mentions of the associated extremist movements and the use of negative, delegitimising frames.

Following a critical juncture which generates intensified linkages between far-right parties and movements,

H2

the frequency of reporting of protest activities of far-right parties increases.

H3

more delegitimising frames are used in coverage of far-right party protest activities.

Moreover, following the extensive literature on media bias (Groeling 2013), we expect differences in the media framing of these far-right parties between newspapers depending on their ideological orientation. More right-wing newspapers could be expected to give fuller coverage to the cause behind these protests involving radical right parties and their grievances expressed, for instance through the use of more legitimising frames (Skocpol and Williamson 2016; DiMaggio 2011). More left-wing newspapers, by contrast, should use such frames less frequently, and instead more often use frames related to the threats the protest activities pose to public safety and democratic norms; that is, make use of more delegitimising frames (Weaver and Scacco 2013).

H4

the framing of the protest activities of far-right parties will vary according to the ideological orientation of newspapers, with more legitimising frames used by right-wing newspapers and more delegitimising frames used by left-wing newspapers.

Data and methods

This paper investigates the media coverage of Western European far-right parties and their involvement in protest in three ways. First, it assesses the extent to which various newspapers report on their movement-like contentious action repertoires; specifically, protest activities. Second, it assesses the evolution in this coverage over time, with particular attention paid to the difference following a ‘critical juncture’, following which the party became more closely involved with protest activities and social movements. In the process, it considers the association between the media salience of the protest activities of far-right parties and the coverage of far-right movements that are also involved in such actions. And third, it analyses the differences in frames used by newspapers of different ideological orientations.

The cases selected for the analysis are the AfD (Germany) and UKIP (United Kingdom). The two parties are ‘typical’ cases of far-right parties that have undergone a process of ‘movementization’, demonstrated by intensified protest activities and links with social movement organisations. The movement-like character of these far-right parties has been noted in academic texts, national media reporting, and claimed by party elites. Both have found sufficient electoral success to enter parliament; the AfD entered parliament in 2017 and UKIP did so in 2008.⁵

The AfD was founded in 2013 as a federation of well-organised conservative activists, economists and political elites, rather than a spontaneous convergence at the grass-roots (Schwörer 2019, p. 34). Nevertheless, in terms of both organisational and action repertoires, the AfD resembles a movement party and has attempted to explicitly position itself as one (Heinze and Weisskircher 2021, p. 267). The party has emphasised its decentralised decision-making structures and internal democracy, which are surprisingly reminiscent of Green and left-wing parties (Heinze and Weisskircher 2021). At the same time, AfD politicians have frequently cooperated with social movements, appearing together at protest events with PEGIDA (Weisskircher and Berntzen 2018; Hellmeier and Vüllers 2022; Grabow 2016) and more recently the so-called Querdenken opposed to COVID-related restrictions (Heinze and Weisskircher 2022).

UKIP, like the AfD, did not emerge from grass-roots movements but has become increasingly closely linked to movements over time (Hanna and Busher 2019; Klein and Pirro 2020; Abedi and Lundberg 2009; Davidson and Berezin 2018). This struggle to maintain a movement-like character came at the cost of long-term internal turmoil (Abedi and Lundberg 2009). Unlike the AfD’s early, close embrace of the Pegida movement,⁶ UKIP long tried to publicly distance itself from more radical movements, while still benefiting from their (often online) support (Davidson and Berezin 2018).⁷ The party’s strategy shifted in the post-Brexit referendum period. Amidst the departure of its highly influential leader Nigel Farage, UKIP opened up to grass-roots far-right movements (Klein and Pirro 2020).

The study relies on six corpuses, comprising all articles that mention the two parties from three national newspapers. In Germany, Bild, Die Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) were selected, while in the UK, The Sun, The Telegraph and The Guardian were selected. The newspapers were chosen due to their relatively high circulation and diversity both in terms of quality and ideology: with one centre-left quality paper (SZ, The Guardian), one centre-right quality paper (Die Welt, The Telegraph), and one tabloid (Bild, The Sun). The articles were collected for the entire lifespan of each party by searching the online databases Factiva and Media Cloud for keywords related to their name, and then, using the R package Quanteda, refined by searching for articles that also refer to protest.⁸ Given the large size of the datasets for some of the newspapers, we selected a random sample of 15% of the articles regarding the party and protest. Table 1 provides an overview of the article corpuses used.

Table 1 Newspaper data

Having collected the data, the analysis is conducted in three steps. Each article constitutes the unit of analysis. First, a close reading is conducted of those articles to confirm their relevance. The articles are then coded according to their topic: whether they are referring to the actual involvement of the party in protest (‘Protest action’); referring to an association with movements and protests without actual involvement (‘Movement rhetoric’); or something else not relevant to a direct connection between the party and protests, such as counter-protests organised by opponents (‘Other’). For more detail on the coding process, using a simple decision tree developed specifically for this project, see the Appendix (Electronic Supplementary Material). Second, a qualitative content analysis is conducted of the ‘protest action’ articles using the MaxQDA software, by assigning segments of the material to the categories of a coding frame (Schreier 2014), identifying the presence of social movement organisations, the issue in focus, and the framing used. The list of frames were derived from the coding scheme of news framing of protest events developed by Gruber (2022), through an analysis of 27,946 newspaper articles in the UK between 1992 and 2017 using natural language processing and machine learning techniques. Given this paper’s focus on the use of (de)legitimising frames, it focuses simply on which—if any—‘moral evaluation’ frames were used in a paragraph. In other words, we examine if the protest is framed as generating a risk or benefit, and in which ways (for example, the use of violence and/or disruption). The codebook, including descriptive criteria and examples, can be seen in the Appendix (Electronic Supplementary Material). The coding has been done by the author, who has extensive experience with qualitative and quantitative forms of content analysis in both of these contexts. Third, after completing the coding of the articles, we engage in a comparative analysis across various newspapers, taking into account any temporal variations. This involves a dual approach, encompassing both qualitative analysis and quantitative comparisons through t-tests.

Findings

How has the movementization of far-right parties’ been covered by national news media? The rest of this paper analyses the newspaper coverage of far-right parties in Germany and the UK and the reporting of their protest activities. Following the process outlined in the preceding section, we detail the findings of the content analysis of the media coverage of the involvement in protest of each party in turn.

Media coverage of the AfD in protest

How does the media report on the protest activities of the AfD? As expected according to H1, of the articles that mention ‘protest’, only a small proportion refer to the actual involvement of the AfD in protest activities (4% in Bild; 12% in SZ; 8% in Die Welt).⁹ There are various other ways that the protest topic is used in reporting on the party. For example, those that concern their associations with protest movements. In these articles, the AfD is often described as working with Pegida, as the movement ‘arm’ of the party, or simply to note the overlap between AfD voters and Pegida protest participants. There is also frequent reporting on counter-protests held by opponents of the AfD, as well as the recurrent use of the phrase ‘protest party’ to describe the AfD profiting from ‘protest votes’ (26% of the total). These articles do not use ‘protest’ in a way which suggests a portrayal of the AfD as a movement party.

The articles that concern the actual involvement of the AfD in protest activities can be grouped into two distinct clusters, based on the issues they focus on, and the period in which they occurred. There are a first wave of protests in 2014–2019, often focused on migration and Islam,¹⁰ and then after the critical juncture of the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, a second wave that has been entirely focused on Covid-related restrictions. In the subsequent period, as expected by H2, more media attention was paid to AfD’s involvement in protest (see Table 2). Along with the shift in issue, there is a corresponding shift in associated movements: a greater presence of anti-Covid Querdenken arise in reporting of the second wave, as would be expected, as well as more right-wing extremists (the proportion of articles that mention them increasing from 18 to 61%).

Table 2 Summary of media coverage of far-right parties’ protest activities

Analysis of the frames used in the media coverage of the protest activities involving the AfD reveal significant differences during the different phases of protest (see Fig. 1). As expected by H3, the delegitimising ‘decay of morals or other social norms’ frame is more frequently used after that critical juncture (t = 2.2132*). The Covid-era protests are portrayed as posing a more serious threat to the political system with references made to antisemitism and anti-democratic conspiracy theories. While the previous phase of protests focused on the migration crisis were framed by newspapers more as a threat to public safety due to violence and threats of violence, the subsequent Covid-era protests were depicted as threatening to the democratic order of Germany.¹¹ This shift in emphasis is closely linked to the increased mentions of right-wing extremists present at these protests. Moreover, there is a greater variety of such groups mentioned in the reporting on the Covid-related protests. While Pegida and the NPD are mentioned in both periods, it is only in the period from 2020 onwards that groups such as the Reichsbürger, Identitarians, Widerstand 2020 and Dritte Weg are mentioned.

Fig. 1

Moral evaluation frames of protest involving PRR parties before and after critical juncture

Comparing between the German newspapers, we see that the most frequently used frames are similar across all three, with t-tests showing no statistically significant differences between them. When we consider the category of moral evaluation frames, the threat that the protests pose to public safety is most commonly used by the Bild and SZ, but somewhat less so by Die Welt. The ‘decay of morals or other social norms’ framing is the most frequently used by Die Welt, and also very frequently used by the SZ. Therefore, contradicting H4, delegitimising framing of the protests predominate for newspapers of all ideological stripes.

In summary, reporting on the protest activities of the AfD reveals two distinct phases, associated with different issues, movements, and frames. As party actors have increasingly involved themselves with protest, and the issue context has changed with the pandemic, the news media has devoted more attention to these activities. This attention has also been paid to the extremist right-wing movements associated with them. The framing has continued to be negative and delegitimising, across different mainstream news outlets, and has become more centred on the threat the party is perceived to pose to the democratic order of Germany.

Media coverage of UKIP in protest

How does the media report on the protest activities of UKIP, and how has the coverage changed over time? Articles that refer to the actual involvement of the UKIP in protests, in line with H1, make up a small proportion of the total sample (8% in the Guardian; 6% in the Telegraph; 6% in the Sun). Similar to the reporting on the AfD, the protest activities of UKIP sit alongside various other subjects concerning protest in relation to the far-right party. There are many newspaper articles which rhetorically connect the party to social movements (3%), rather than referring to any protest engagements in particular, as well as articles in which the party shows its support, or calls for, protest (2%). The majority of the reporting on UKIP and their relation to protest, as with the AfD, concerns topics that do not suggest a movement party depiction at all. For example, the numerous articles that refer to the party as a mere ‘protest vote’ (18%) and discuss counter-protests against UKIP (8%).

Unlike the shift in issue shown in reporting of the AfD, the protests of the UKIP are consistent in their focus on the EU. Yet there is an important modulation that follows the Brexit referendum in 2016, after which the focus is more specifically on fulfilling the ‘Leave’ vote. The vote acted as critical juncture for British politics as a whole and generated a shift in strategy from UKIP. In the subsequent period, as expected by H2, more media attention was paid to UKIP’s involvement in protest (see Table 2). Along with this shift came a change in the social movements associated with the party. Prior to the referendum, UKIP strove to keep a distance from radical movements. As a result, the protests mentioned in that period tended to be either from party elites within the European Parliament or small-scale, often eccentric, performances from activists. The most significant change in the second, post-referendum period was the arrival of far-right icon Tommy Robinson, having been appointed a party advisor in 2018, along with associated far-right movements like the English Defence League, the Football Lads Alliance and the White Pendragons.

Analysis of the frames used in the media coverage of UKIP’s engagement in protest activities before and after the critical juncture of Brexit builds upon existing findings regarding the change undergone in the party’s social media output (Klein and Pirro 2020). The consequences of the shift in strategy for their representation in the news media are ambiguous. On the one hand, somewhat in line with H3, there is a clear increase in the use of some delegitimising frames, as shown in Fig. 1. The ‘decay of morals or other social norms’ frame, as in the case of the AfD, becomes more frequently used with their increasing involvement in protest (t = 2.9884**). The coming together of far-right forces, from both the party and movement arenas, is described in multiple articles as a “poison” that is infecting politics.¹² Moreover, the use of a ‘just cause’ framing of the protesters was used in a legitimising way prior to Brexit, to signal approval of protests led by UKIP MEPs within the European Parliament, particularly by the right-wing press. On the other hand, the framing of the protests as a threat to public safety caused by the protesters, was previously the most frequent framing, particularly by the liberal Guardian, prior to the Brexit era.¹³ In fact, the threat to public safety had been more directly attributed to protesters from the EDL movement rather than UKIP itself. Besides these different delegitimising frames, following the critical juncture, the protests are actually more often reported in ways that give voice to the protesters and detail the motivations for their actions. The most frequently used framing of protests involving UKIP after the Brexit referendum is one that was entirely absent beforehand: ‘grievance’ (t = 2.6084*). This refers to articles that express the claims which the protest is putting forward and often attribute blame towards government officials.

Differences in media framing of UKIP’s involvement in protest are not only seen over time but also evident in the most frequently used frames by the different newspapers, as expected by H4.¹⁴ The right-wing Telegraph most often uses the grievance framing, giving a large amount of coverage to the idea of a ‘Brexit betrayal’ voiced by the protesters. Its second most frequently used frame is the ‘just cause’, with references to popular support from passers-by and approving words of support from politicians, while its third most used frame concerns the apparent attempts to suppress/censor the message of protests by political elites. The Sun also often uses a ‘just cause’ framing of the protests. These two newspapers therefore frequently replicate a framing more preferable to UKIP, due to their pro-Leave sympathies. The liberal, pro-Remain Guardian instead most often emphasises the threats that the protests pose to public safety as well as, secondly, the threat to morality and social norms they demonstrate. It is notable that these frames are most frequently used in combination with reference to other movements protesting alongside UKIP—the EDL and Tommy Robinson—rather than the party itself. Moreover, it is only The Guardian that specifically mentions a number of other extremist movement partners: the Football Lads’ Alliance, Combat 18, and the National Front.

In summary therefore, in the post-Brexit period we see a shift in the news media coverage of UKIP and their protest activities. Prior to the Brexit referendum, protests had been reported on as party-led phenomena, whether performed by grass-roots members or within parliament. After the referendum, amidst a contentious environment with protests on both sides of the Leave-Remain debate, newspapers increasingly reported on UKIP protest activities and associated movements of the far-right. Delving into the frames used reveals differences in the prioritisation of frames used by different newspapers: the right-wing Telegraph and Sun tend to give voice to the protesters’ grievances, particularly after the critical juncture of the Brexit referendum, whereas the liberal Guardian focuses on the threats to public safety and democratic norms posed by the protests (in particular through the extremist movements involved).

Discussion: comparing media coverage of far-right party protest

What can we learn about the strategy of far-right parties to ‘movementize’ from the analysis of the media coverage of the protest activities of these two cases? Having detailed the findings for each case separately above, here we discuss them comparatively. Considering the issues, associated social movements, and the frames used in the reporting we find both similarities between the two cases, as well as revealing differences. The findings are summarised in Table 2. In both cases, the number of newspaper articles covering parties’ protest activities increases after a ‘critical juncture’. Moreover, as their issue focus shifts—turning away from migration and towards Covid, in the case of AfD, and from general Euroscepticism towards a more specific focus on Brexit, in the case of UKIP—the media describe both as increasingly engaging in protest with associated extremist movements. We also see a remarkable degree of similarity in the frames used regarding the protest activities of the AfD and UKIP. The dominance of negative, delegitimising frames across both cases is entirely fitting with expectations based on the ‘protest paradigm’ (Weaver and Scacco 2013).

However, as shown in Fig. 2, there are two important exceptions to the cross-case consistency. First, the use of legitimising ‘grievance’ frames is higher in the reporting of protests involving UKIP (t = − 2.3093*), and second, the use of delegitimising ‘decay of morals’ frames is higher in reporting on those involving the AfD (t = 2.8348**). To explain these differences we need to consider the change that comes with the critical juncture not only in terms of links with associated movements but also in terms of the issue in focus. In the case of UKIP, the party shifts towards an issue (the execution of the Brexit referendum verdict) that not only has acquired much legitimacy following victory in a national referendum with a large turnout but is also in line with the long-term sympathies of two of the newspapers. This opens up the party’s activities to a more sympathetic framing than the issue focused upon by the AfD: anti-Covid restrictions. As expected from such previous work, in both cases the far-right party joins with extremist movements in protest; these connections are frequently reported on and associated with delegitimising frames. The use of the more legitimising ‘grievance’ frame in the case of UKIP, however, tends to emerge through quotes from non-movement affiliated individual protesters.¹⁵ Our results therefore point to distinct varieties in the media framing of far-right movement parties.

Fig. 2

Moral evaluation frames used in news media coverage of protest involving PRR parties

We should note that in both contexts, and all of the newspapers in each, there is actually minimal attention paid by the media to the protest actions of these parties. The neglect of protest is particularly evident in the tabloid newspapers in both countries (the Bild and The Sun). This finding suggests a disparity between the representation of the far-right in the news media and their actual activities, in light of the argument of Minkenberg (2019) that radical right parties ‘almost by definition exhibit movement characteristics in that they continuously engage in “contentious politics”’ [emphasis added].¹⁶ Their engagement with contentious politics in the form of protest, and through it the presentation of their movement characteristics, is not highly salient to the mass media coverage of these radical right parties at any point. It is telling that the connection of ‘protest’ to all of the parties is far more likely to result from the media describing them as a ‘protest party’ or benefiting from ‘protest votes’, rather than from reporting on them actually involved in contentious protest actions.

Conclusion

This paper contributes to the existing literature on far-right (movement) parties by unpacking the ways in which the ‘movementization’ of two highly significant cases has been covered in the news media. Firstly, in line with the ‘protest paradigm’, it demonstrates that their engagement in protest activities does not commonly appear in news media coverage at any point. In other words, the portrayal of either as a ‘movement party’, an increasingly popular concept in academic research into the far-right, is not rooted in their activities as they are relayed to the general public. Following a critical juncture which generated intensified linkages between protest movements and both the AfD and UKIP, we find that, secondly, there is more frequent reporting of the parties’ protest activities and, thirdly, more delegitimising frames are used in the coverage of these activities. Fourthly, in the case of the UK, but not in Germany, some variation is revealed between newspapers of different ideological orientations which leads to some ambiguity in a combination of both legitimising and delegitimising frames. These findings support the call of Weaver and Sacco (2013: 77) for closer attention to the differences between news outlets in the framing of protests, rather than assuming the protest paradigm allows us to understand how they are framed by the media in general.

The findings have implications for our understanding of news media coverage of the far-right in the context of their growth and increasing acceptance as part of the political mainstream. Criticism has been levelled at the mainstream media for its insufficiently critical coverage of these parties and the mainstreaming effect of euphemistic framing that overlooks racism in favour of other features (Brown and Mondon 2020). Like the ‘populist’ label, a portrayal of the far-right as a ‘movement party’ able to mobilise supporters on the streets may be preferable to parties with the aim to broaden their support, rather than alternative labels such as radical or extremist. However, this analysis has shown that the reporting of movement-like activities is not commonly used and, when it is, it tends to be employed in conjunction with delegitimising framing, often with references to associated anti-democratic and violent movements. The paper therefore highlights the importance of the presence of associated (extremist) movements for variation in the media reporting of the protest activities of far-right parties, in terms of both salience and framing.¹⁷ It would be worthwhile for future research to compare the different media portrayals of far-right parties (e.g. populist, extremist, ‘movement party’), and to assess the associated frames associated with each.

These findings also have implications for our understanding of the strategies of contemporary far-right parties. Rather than a means to mass appeal, the strategic value derived from their involvement in protest seems to be derived to a greater extent from the mobilisation it facilitates from within the movements with whom they align. Indeed, given the importance of media attention to protest groups as both an outcome and a resource (Gamson 2004), we should not underestimate the value of such collaborations for the associated movements. Then again, the reporting of these protests is not universally negative and delegitimising. In the case of UKIP, right-wing newspapers and tabloids also give increasing space to the grievances of the protesters, often voiced by ‘ordinary’ citizens who are not labelled as belonging to extremist movements. It is unclear how readers will deal with such ambiguous, even contradictory, framing used within the same article. This speaks to the recent call from Harlow and Brown (2023) for a more critical approach to the protest paradigm, that takes into account nuances in the coverage of protest beyond a simple legitimising/delegitimising dichotomy. We recommend experimental studies to analyse reader reactions to such articles that combine mixed and contradictory framing, and the consequences for popular sentiment towards (far-right) parties.

This paper aims to contribute to the emerging research strand regarding so-called ‘movement parties’ through engagement with their media coverage. We should note that this paper has focused solely on their contentious action repertoires, through their involvement in protests. Such an operationalisation of the ‘movement party’ concept is in keeping with the existing literature (for an overview, see: Borbáth and Paxton, 2024), from the foundational theoretical work of Kitschelt (2006), to more recent empirical works (Pirro and Castelli Gattinara 2018). To complete the picture, however, future research could also examine the media coverage of other facets constitutive of the movement party concept. First, through analysis of the use of labels such as ‘movement’ and ‘movement party’ in the media representation of the far-right. Second, regarding their reporting of the broader connections made with social movement organisations and others in civil society, outside of protest activities. Third, regarding the media coverage of the (participatory and/or plebiscitarian) organisational repertoires, which are similar to social movements. In so doing, research could explore the reporting of intra-party procedures and disputes involving the far-right in the mass media, as well as the links between movements and the party within this arena.