De Witte Mars als product van de media: de pers als mobilisatiealternatief voor bewegingsorganisaties

Samenvatting

Using Neil Smelser's (1962) theory of collective behavior, in which a distinction is made between consensus mobilization & action mobilization, & D. Snow et al's (1986) frame alignment approach (which distinguishes strategies of frame bridging, amplification, extension, & transformation to align ideas of the population with those of the mobilizers) as a theoretical framework, it is hypothesized that the press took the role of intermediary organizations in mobilizing some 300,000 demonstrators for the White March of 20 Oct 1996 in Brussels, Belgium, to protest government handling of the Dutroux child murder case. Analysis of 1996 news coverage in five Flemish newspapers (N = 329 articles) supports the hypothesis that the media organized the march by mobilizing the population from consensus to action through a gradual alignment of reference frames at all levels. 2 Tables, 8 Figures, 50 References. Adapted from the source document.