Poor People’s Protests and the Press
The project studies selection bias in the media by drawing on a unique, observations-based dataset of all protest activity at India’s most popular protest site over a period of 44 months. Democratic accountability assumes unbiased and exhaustive coverage of citizens’ agitation by the news media. The project will compare media’s selection bias against poor people’s protests and protests of other social segments, across twelvetop Indian newspapers. It hypothesizes that the news media is more likely to neglect poor people’s protests. The same press, which reports reliably on disaster-related deaths of the poor, regularly neglects the everyday livelihood and wellbeing related concerns of the poor.