Extinction Rebellion’s The Big One, the Medium, the Message & Media Coverage
XR’s 4 day Big One protest in Westminster has concluded. As XR posted the Government ignored their demands, hence further strategies to press the case for action on climate change are needed.
I’m not party to discussions, while supporting the protests. However I’ve been on and organised enough protests over more than five decades to know that there are parameters. Social movement theory covers much and Charles Tilly’s Repertoires of Contention looks at tactics and strategies albeit in a hierarchical and static way.
A key issue XR had with the Big One was a lack of media coverage. 60,000 or so (XR’s estimate) were at a Saturday protest in Westminster and perhaps 90,000 involved over the 4 days.
It’s an impressive number but not huge. In recent decades the anti-Iraq War demonstration in 2003 gathered over a million and several protests against Brexit attracted hundreds of thousands. These events attracted media attention, not just because of their size but also they related directly to political events that were happening at the time.
The Big One did attract some media attention. The Guardian ran several articles, the Morning Star had front page coverage, the BBC did post a report, albeit not prominently. Meanwhile the Mail went on about eco-zealots, while the Financial Times published an opinion piece arguing that protest on climate change was a good thing.
Mass coverage it was not, although there was of course a lot on social media. That however will have been seen mainly by those already aware and sympathetic.
As the social movement academic and activist Laurence Cox posted if you are relying on media coverage to put pressure on Government on climate change perhaps think again.
The issue of course is that peaceful protest, with the exceptions noted above, is not newsworthy. If there is no obvious threat to authority, then authority ignores matters.
The question perhaps is the nature of the threat. A major trade union, PCS, did support the Big One. However an industrial strategy, which XR has posted on, is absent. A strike on climate change issues could make a big impact but would be difficult, as any strike, to organise. French pension protests have for example blocked oil refineries, not specifically on climate change, but the very action provides space for the point to be raised and argued.
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