Monitoring the consensus or driving polarization? Comparing journalistic coverage of anti-Green pass and anti-war protests in France and Italy (2021–2024)

Abstract

This study analyzes how the Italian and French press covered dissenting voices and protest against Covid-19 restrictions in 2021–2022 and protests against military support for Ukraine in 2022–2024. Both Covid-19 emergency measures and military support of Ukraine were backed by broad coalitions comprising government and opposition parties in Western democracies. In both cases, dissenting voices were marginalized. Such a broad political and societal consensus in a situation of emergency poses a dilemma to the traditional watchdog function of journalism. On the one hand, journalists are expected to back mainstream political forces that stand up for public health and security. On the other hand, journalists should report critically on the opposition and cover minority positions, which in the case of anti-vaccination and anti-war protests are often branded as radical or extremist. Both the collaborative and the radical strategy are risky because they might undermine trust in journalism as a neutral mediator, activating processes of polarization and fragmentation of the public sphere. Based on the manual coding of a corpus of 790 articles from 12 newspapers, this study captures the diffusion of openly partisan and antagonistic stances among journalists targeting both anti-consensus and pro-consensus actors. The data show that the Italian debate is much more polarized than the French; however, in both cases, pro-consensus journalists show a much greater propensity to transgress the norms of impartial and independent journalism, compared to journalists criticizing the political consensus.