Media and transnational social movements : a content analysis of The Globe and Mail's coverage of the 2009 Tamil protest in Toronto
By using theoretical frameworks of Medium theory and New Social Movement Theory, this study analyzed how The Globe and Mail news articles published from January to May 2009 depicted the transnational social movement efforts of the 2009 Tamil protest in Toronto. The method of content analysis was applied to the following research question: How do new articles from The Globe and Mail newspaper portray the transnational social movement (TSM) efforts of the Tamil Diaspora in Canada? This study found that (1) overall there was a negative coverage of the Tamil transnational social movement; and (2) the emphasis was mostly placed on the Tamil protest's alleged affiliation and support for a banned terrorist group. This paper will conclude that the news articles of The Globe and Mail presented a distorted message of the Tamil protest in the articles to attract readership rather than inform the audience, in a neutral method, about the protest events that were occurring at that time. Hence, future research should seek to expand on this study by doing a longitudinal and comparative analysis of the relationship between media and the Tamil transnational social movement.