Indiana Newsrooms Move Beyond the Protest Paradigm

From university encampments to labor strikes at the steps of the capitol, protests are a vital, legally protected mechanism for democratic participation. Yet, when collective action disrupts the status quo, the ways journalists choose to cover these events can either empower civic understanding or fuel what scholars call the protest paradigm—a pattern that emphasizes spectacle, conflict, and disruption over the actual grievances of the organizers.

Our team recently conducted an extensive media audit to map the narrative landscape of protest news coverage across Indiana between 2024 and 2025, analyzing 512 articles from mainstream, digital-first, and student newsrooms. We found both encouraging progress and entrenched challenges in how local news operates during high-conflict scenarios.

Here is what the data tells us—and how newsrooms and the philanthropic organizations that support them can move toward reparative, pro-democratic narrative change.

Let’s start with the good news! Across the board, Indiana journalists are overwhelmingly centering the voices of protesters. In over 60% of the stories analyzed, activists and protesters were the primary sources of information, compared to just 22% that leaned more heavily on official sources like police or politicians.

However, what is being protested heavily dictates how the story is framed. We found that the protest paradigm is still very much at play, particularly concerning interethnic considerations. Coverage of the anti-war encampments was significantly more likely to rely on delegitimizing frames and official sourcing than protests focused on labor disputes, local policy, or civil rights. On the other side of this coin, though, when covering these specific encampment protests, journalists were notably more likely to highlight police, security, and counter-protester clashes. This kind of detailed attention to the behaviors of control and counter efforts has been relatively limited in the past.

One of the most striking findings emerged from student newsrooms. While they shared similar framing tendencies with mainstream outlets regarding disruption and spectacle, student journalists were twice as likely to contextualize protests within broader constitutional frameworks. They discussed First Amendment and free speech rights in 51.7% of their coverage, compared to just 27.7% in mainstream reporting. Ultimately, student journalists are actively providing a more holistic, multi-sided, and pro-democratic view of these events.

Read the full report for a roadmap for newsrooms and philanthropic funders invested in supporting journalism and democracy.