Talk:Protest paradigm

Article is incredibly america-centric

I'm aware this article is new, but I've noticed a general slant not only towards left-populism, but American media in general. The article's topic should theoretically cover the whole world (i.e outlets like Belarus 1 or Pink (Serbia). _⛿ WeaponizingArchitecture | yell at me 23:01, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Before removing essential sourcing and introducing citation errors, please consult the talk page in the future if you dispute specific sources.

You're welcome to expand the article if you feel like it's America-centric. But the reason it's America centric is largely because it's better documented in America and more prevalent in America than many other countries. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 01:45, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

This claim is deeply unserious and doesn't adress the fact that the article gives undue weight to US media. Such techniques have been used extensively and perfect by figures such as Vladislav Surkov, Serbian media since Milosevic, etc. Daseyn (talk) 19:37, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Then like I said, you're welcome to expand the article. I added the Greta Thunberg section, which is outside the US. I don't know what else you want from me.

This claim is deeply unserious - No, it's documented by WP:RS sources in the article. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 20:23, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

I did some thinking about your comment and if you would like to expand the article, I had an idea of a good starting point.

I reached out to the grad student who wrote an article about the protest paradigm in coverage of the death of Mahsa Amini. If you'd like me to send over the PDF to you, let me know and I'd be happy to do so. Below is the citation for the article:

Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 19:05, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

For future reference, if you have criticisms of an article (especially one that's already been reviewed by other editors and admins), the best course of action isn't always to immediately add the "multiple issues" tag to the top of the page—starting a discussion on the talk page is often a better course of action because your opinion about issues with the article might not always be shared by others. If everyone added tags every time they had a problem with a page instead of starting a discussion, every Wiki page would be marked as having "multiple issues", even when it's better to raise more specific concerns on the talk page instead. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 01:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

References

"Specific examples" sourcing

@Alexandraaaacs1989: most of the examples given of the protest paradigm only have citations linking to the articles in question, without providing any secondary sources claiming these are examples of the protest paradigm. Compare to, for example, the coverage from USA Today and The New York Times on Occupy Wall Street, which cites a paper from the International Journal on Communication about the protest paradigm as it relates to those newspapers and the given quotes in the Wikipedia article. Without similar reliable secondary sources for the other examples, I believe the text constitutes original research. Do you have sources specifically naming these articles as part of the protest paradigm?

ARoseThorn (talk) 22:42, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Other notes:

• This conversation is distinct from the previous one about the quantity and length of the quotes.
• One possible counterargument is that "You don't need to cite that the sky is blue" – i.e. it's obvious that these articles fit into the protest paradigm, so no additional source is needed. I disagree; in the previous discussion, you say "I will insert a number corresponding to one of the above characteristics when I believe it is invoked" (emphasis mine), indicating there's room for disagreement.

ARoseThorn (talk) 22:59, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes some of the sourcing does not explicitly connect the examples provided to the protest paradigm, and you correctly anticipated my counterargument relies on WP:SKYBLUE (and WP:NOTCOM).

But I'm not sure saying I believe a policy applies automatically makes this belief OR. Editors can believe WP:SKYBLUE/WP:NOTCOM apply because the basis of thinking any policy applies somewhere is a matter of belief no matter an editor's level of confidence that the policy applies. As a result, there's always room for disagreement. I just happen to believe the threshold of obviousness (in WP:SKYBLUE and WP:NOTCOM) has been met, and I don't believe people who disagree with me on this point are using common sense when interpreting the sources.

Per WP:OR, "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation" and "Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source." To me, the articles' use certainly counts as analysis or interpretation.

any interpretation of primary source material that isn't made by secondary sources are OR, per OR like you said. But the only interpretation being done is basically saying "this is an instance of the protest paradigm" as the term has been defined by RS in the article. So this very surface-level interpretation, which makes it less extraordinary and more strongly protected by WP:SKYBLUE/WP:NOTCOM.

For example, the notion that the below example engages in the protest paradigm is (per WP:NOTCOM) obvious to anyone who reads and understands the sources that are supposed to support it. It engages in multiple of the protest paradigm strategies explicitly described by academic RS in the article ("carnival" narrative framing, delegitimization, no public support, omission of goals, framing electoral politics as a more realistic alternative):

This is the problem with overstated expectations, and with confusing high emotion with effectiveness. The protesters' stated goal was to turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square, but too many Americans do have jobs to make an Arab-Spring-style uprising even possible. It's hard to take a protest fully seriously when it looks more like a circus – some participants seem to have taken a chute straight from Burning Man – and when it's organized by a Canadian magazine and a computer-hacking group. (Also, organizers first declared that they would draw 20,000 protesters, but only 1,000 showed up. That's not a media conspiracy. It's math.) All of which explains why, when it comes to channeling liberal rage – or liberal sarcasm, which sometimes works just as well – Elizabeth Warren has a much better shot. Indeed, in a race that's getting national attention, she may have found the perfect medium for her corporate-accountability message.

If you believe some articles are not obvious enough that WP:SKYBLUE/WP:NOTCOM apply, then we can review each article on a case-by-case basis. But based on the above, it seems pretty clear that at least some of the articles included that were not explicitly connected by secondary sourcing to the protest paradigm are WP:DUE for inclusion per WP:SKYBLUE/WP:NOTCOM. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 13:48, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

@Alexandraaaacs1989 You're right that my counter-argument was not thorough. Admittedly, it just seemed very clear to me that asserting that any article follows any paradigm requires analysis or interpretation of the article; from your response above it seems you do agree that these examples are interpretations, albeit surface-level interpretation. However, how surface-level an interpretation is isn't relevant to whether the original research policy applies; the policy is about "Any interpretation of primary source material".

Furthermore, I think that you're being too expansive with the use of 'obvious' and 'common sense'. Applying the points described within the paradigm inherently requires a series of value judgements. For example, in your Boston Globe analysis above:

• Saying "This is the problem with overstated expectations..." is an example of delegitimization supposes the claims that it is factually true that the expectations of the protesters are not overstated, and that the article does an insufficient job elsewhere providing the context and intent of the protesters.
• Saying "...too many Americans do have jobs to make an Arab-Spring-style uprising even possible" is an example of no public support supposes on the claim that people being unable to participate in an uprising implies they do not support it.
• Saying "It's hard to take a protest fully seriously when it looks more like a circus" is an example of narrative framing supposes the claim that "look[ing] like a circus" is a framing repeated for other events, though this one seems like a very straightforward synthesis from the given sources (e.g. Xu's "carnival") so it's pretty reasonable in my opinion.
• Saying "Also, organizers first declared that they would draw 20,000 protesters, but only 1,000 showed up." is an example of no public support requires the claim that the intent of their comparison is to show that the protest is generally not liked by the public, I think – I may be misinterpreting what is meant by this point.
• I'm honestly not quite sure how saying "All of which explains why, when it comes to channeling liberal rage – or liberal sarcasm, which sometimes works just as well – Elizabeth Warren has a much better shot. Indeed, in a race that's getting national attention, she may have found the perfect medium for her corporate-accountability message." is an example of delegitimization; my best understanding is that it's delegitimizing by saying Warren will be effective, and as such the protests will be ineffective, but I'm not totally sure if that's what you meant.

It's not that I disagree with your interpretation – in fact, I think a majority of the points made above are in fact in line with the claims of the protest paradigm – it's that there are a series of personal judgements which must be made in order to support that interpretation. ("You do need to cite that the sky is blue" is a good read on reasons that something which might seem common sense should still be cited, though I doubt you're unfamiliar with the arguments.)

If we can't reach agreement on this, I think the best course of action would be to bring the matter to Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard.

Regards, ARoseThorn (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

• This is the problem with overstated expectations, and with confusing high emotion with effectiveness. - Frames protesters' goals as inherently problematic and protesters as being high-emotion rather than "effective" (e.g. by voting for Elizabeth Warren). Delegitimization
• The protesters' stated goal was to turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square, but too many Americans do have jobs to make an Arab-Spring-style uprising even possible. - Treats protesters' goals as inherently unrealistic due to the nature of the US as a first-world country. Delegitimization
• Carnival narrative framing (we agree)
• Also, organizers first declared that they would draw 20,000 protesters, but only 1,000 showed up. That's not a media conspiracy. It's math. - Framing the protest as too incompetent to attract an audience, and that their audience as lackluster, in a sarcastic tone. Delegitimization/No public support
• Yes you were right about Warren. RS in the article talk about how good news is more likely when journalists cover bipartisan politics, and bad news is more likely when journalists cover protests (source), so this is directly supported by RS as being a behavior engaged in within the protest paradigm.

Most importantly, some level of interpretation is always necessary in every article, and this can be the case without committing any OR violations. Summarizing material involves interpreting the original words to create a new way of explaining your interpretation of what you read. The sum of 5 + 5 involves interpreting the numbers to be 10. So the assertion that OR is about Any interpretation of primary source material doesn't seem to apply absolutely. There's a threshold for sure, no? Can we get on the same page about this?

I think we should go to the noticeboard for second opinions if we both agree there's a threshold of direct-ness in when it comes to whether a claim can be counted as OR. If we simply disagree about where on the spectrum OR ends, I'm not sure how we'll be able to convince each other using arguments. But if you have any ideas on how to draw the line, I think we can avoid the noticeboard and solve things here until we arrive at an impasse. I'm open to changing my mind and I hope you are too!

Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 06:18, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

@Alexandraaaacs1989 Thank you for your explanation. There are some specific points I could pick at – for example, I don't read That's not a media conspiracy. It's math. as "sarcastic" per se – but I think that's beyond the point, and anyways I really don't want to get into a word-by-word analysis of the articles.

We are in agreement that there's a threshold of direct-ness in when it comes to whether a claim can be counted as OR. While I disagree with your claim that The sum of 5 + 5 involves interpreting the numbers to be 10 – to me, that requires an unusual interpretation of the word "interpreting" – saying "five plus five equals ten" is definitively a claim which falls under WP:SKYBLUE; indeed, there's an section about "routine calculations" on Wikipedia:No original research. However, to my knowledge there are no such provisions for the kind of analysis being presented here.

We presumably do have different ideas on where on the spectrum OR ends, and it seems my conception is stricter than yours. However, at the end of the day, the question we're trying to answer is "Is the inclusion of the examples in the article acceptable within Wikipedia's policy?" Regardless of our individual beliefs, that question can be litigated (and ideally resolved) by the noticeboard.

ARoseThorn (talk) 04:26, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

ARoseThorn I'll respond here!

• The protesters' stated goal was to turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square, but too many Americans do have jobs to make an Arab-Spring-style uprising even possible. is evidence of deligimization, but in the thread "Dispute over long quotes" you said it was an example of no public support without bringing up delegitimization; this implies disagreement with your past self on your exact analysis, which to me is evidence against the claim that your analysis is common sense – but perhaps you just forgot to mention it or made a typo.
  • That's a fair point, and I see why it looks this way, but I think the reason behind my inconsistency was because there is so much overlap between different aspects of the protest paradigm. Saying there's no public support implies delegitimization by nature, for instance, even though "no public support" and "delegitimization" are both spoken about as if they're separate aspects of the protest paradigm without any explicit connection between them.
• I think that simply saying "this text is an example of the protest paradigm" isn't useful even if it is acceptable under Wikipedia policy; the only way for a reader to get anything out of it is by parsing the large chunks of text in the footnotes and comparing line-by-line to the guidelines laid out earlier in the article. To improve comprehensibility, I would want the analysis you gave above to be included in the article.
  • I 100% agree, which is why it initially had text chunks in the article before other good faith editors came in and told me this was harmful to the article/too verbose, and I wasn't able to successfully defend my initial decision to keep long text chunks in the article without footnoting them. Here's that discussion above. Happy to relitigate this issue though because we're in agreement this would largely improve the article. But yes first figuring out which paragraphs are/aren't OR based on a third opinion would probably be wise to narrow the scope of this discussion so we don't redundantly debate including content that will later be removed.
• I'll add our talk discussion to the 3O page so we can see what others think regarding our disagreement about where the OR threshold is in this scenario!

Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 17:54, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request (Disagreement regarding whether inclusion of text as an example of the protest paradigm constitutes an WP:OR violation or whether it is obvious enough that we are allowed to include it using editorial discretion per WP:NOTCOM and WP:SKYBLUE):

I am responding to a third opinion request for this page. I have made no previous edits on Protest paradigm and have no known association with the editors involved in this discussion. The third opinion process is informal and I have no special powers or authority apart from being a fresh pair of eyes.

Hello @ARoseThorn and @Alexandraaaacs1989! I have read through the thread, and my interpretation tends toward viewing the usage of the primary source articles as original research. As such, I think that such text should be used in conjunction with reliable secondary sources interpreting the text as examples of the protest paradigm. This is my reasoning: First, it seems to be agreed that asserting that any article follows any paradigm requires analysis or interpretation of the article, and that the dispute is primarily over the obviousness of the interpretation. Second, it seems to be agreed that per WP:OR, Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation and Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source. Third, WP:BLUE appears to be discussing examples that are extremely obvious or essentially without dispute. As per WP:BLUE: Since all material that is either challenged or likely to be challenged must be cited, if someone else is already challenging material as false or misleading, then it needs an inline citation and especially: consider that something that may be obvious to you may not be obvious to them. While the content here is not necessarily challenged as in and of itself false or inaccurate, the material is being used to make an interpretive claim about the reporting of certain news outlets. The fact that there is a dispute and that reasonable minds can reach different conclusions about rhetorical elements of the sources seems to be enough to reach the status of a challenge, and/or casts doubt on the obviousness of the interpretive claims. It is not necessarily obvious in many of these quotes that the paradigm can be applied. It seems better left to secondary source scholarship when applying a framework to primary source text, and I think WP:VOICE is informative here: Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice, for example the sky is blue not [name of source] believes the sky is blue. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Fourth, similarly under WP:NOTCOM: If something is obvious to anyone who reads and understands the sources that are supposed to support it, then it's not SYNTH. The examples cited in WP:NOTCOM use two undisputed facts (that the moon and sun have certain sizes) to draw an obvious conclusion (that the sun is relatively large and the moon is relatively small). Of course, not all obvious interpretations involve the exact structure of WP:BUNDLING, but it seems that the interpretation must be so obvious as to be essentially futile to dispute. To elaborate, it does not seem clear-cut that The protesters' stated goal was to turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square, but too many Americans do have jobs to make an Arab-Spring-style uprising even possible is delegitimizing or claims no public support in an obvious or common sense way. While many might potentially agree, these are political issues involving a primary source’s viewpoint regarding a protest movement. Applying a framework from a secondary source to the text of such a primary source expresses a Wikipedia editor's opinion regarding the source and its applicability to the framework, which is original analysis and would seem to violate WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. It is making a claim in the same way a sociologist or historian might, it is an inherently original analysis which would require a secondary source. Even when the statement from the primary source that It's hard to take a protest fully seriously when it looks more like a circus seems to fit the carnival trope in the paradigm extremely closely, and it seems many might agree with the interpretation, WP:NOTCOM explicitly cautions that: Beware however of using vague concepts defined in one source to interpret statements in another source. Many concepts in social sciences have vague definitions. If I write an article on a social science concept defined in secondary sources, I would not have the expertise to apply the concept to a primary source as an example for the article, even if it seems obvious to me. Applying a definition I cite is an analytic interpretation, it is a step beyond merely being obvious to anyone who reads and understands the sources that are supposed to support the application. This is especially true of a definition in sociology or media studies, as opposed to the metrics provided by quantitative natural sciences. Fifth, while the statement that: some level of interpretation is always necessary in every article, and this can be the case without committing any OR violations. Summarizing material involves interpreting the original words to create a new way of explaining your interpretation of what you read is true, summarization does not make a novel claim from existing sources, unlike applying a definition to a novel case. This is also outlined under WP:WINOR. Separately, there is some discussion of reviewing the primary source articles on a case-by-case basis. The thread analyzes portions of one block quote of one of the articles, and this seems to result in a protracted dispute over the obviousness or common sense applicability of the paradigm. I think this in and of itself demonstrates that WP:BLUE and WP:NOTCOM are unlikely to apply, and that original research is being done through the analysis of primary sources using the definitions of the cited secondary sources, which would seem to be original research in any similar case. As an aside to this point, WP:DUE does not seem to necessitate that any particular source be included. The statement that some of the articles included that were not explicitly connected by secondary sourcing to the protest paradigm are WP:DUE for inclusion seems unrelated to the policy, which states that: Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Here, I think a primary source could not be used as a reliable source for an example supporting a viewpoint on the paradigm under due weight because the source does not claim a viewpoint on the paradigm. Please feel free to disagree or stipulate or note any misunderstandings I may have, this is my reading of the relative applicability of OR. Jacob Rampino (talk) 01:32, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi Jacob, thank you very much for your 3O and for your in-depth analysis of our disagreement. I think you articulated your points very well, as did Rose throughout this disagreement. I'm happy to respect the result of this 3O - that ARoseThorn has the correct position here and I have the wrong one, and that what I have argued deserves inclusion in the article constitutes an OR violation.

I'm very preoccupied with another article I've been building at the moment, so what I'm going to do is add a TODO note to my user page so I don't forget to circle back to this discussion and make changes that will reflect the outcome of this discussion as soon as I have time. If anyone would like to make these changes sooner on their own, they are welcome to do so. The changes this would include, as the outcome of the 3O, will include:

• Deleting examples of the protest paradigm that do not have explicit sourcing saying they are an example of the protest paradigm, for instance:
  • WABC-TV (ABC News) invoked the protest paradigm in an article titled "325 arrested after Pro-Palestinian protesters block major bridges, Holland Tunnel," disproportionately quoting city officials who delegitimized protester goals, emphasizing charges brought against protesters, and characterizing the protests in the context of the Israel fighting Hamas rather than mentioning criticisms actually held by the protesters.
• And, as Rose and I briefly discussed as a possible next step, using the {{quote}} template to expand some of the existing examples of the protest paradigm that are corroborated by sources to not simply hide their quotes in footnotes. We could ping Diana and Sphlitbrick from the above discussion and make consensus-building efforts if we decide to go about this, and if necessary, we could start an RfC to break the tie (even though it's WP:NOTAVOTE we're roughly split evenly on consensus for quote expansion).

Once I make it back, I will likely do another sweep of the literature to see if there's any other articles out there accused of engaging in the protest paradigm by RS and get those added as well. Take care all, I'll add this to my TODO page. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 07:04, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

@ARoseThorn I have removed the "specific examples" paragraphs. Let me know if there's any remaining issues! Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 21:43, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

@Alexandraaaacs1989 Thank you for making the changes :) ARoseThorn (talk) 17:41, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Although I can see the work has been done since these issues have been raised, this article continues to be dominated by original research. if somebody came here looking to find out the protest paradigm concept means, who originated it and when, what the theory’s antecedents were, what was the context for the development of the theory, how it has been applied, if it has been criticised or is dominant in the field - they would go away completely uninformed. Instead it is assumed that the paradigm is a true description of how media works and it is then applied to a series of apparently arbitrary events. It needs to be massively to become encyclopaedic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:32, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

You make some good points about areas for improvement. I'll do some work on expanding the article. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 13:18, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

There are several tags throughout the article that indicate sourcing or potential WP:VOICE issues.

An example of OR still present: even though the quotes are now collapsed, the article says “Joanna Weiss of The Boston Globe invoked the protest paradigm…” yet the two citations have the words “protest paradigm” nowhere in them. I think this specific citation (re “Tahrir Square” and “too many Americans do have jobs”) was actually used in my 3O as one of the examples of original research.

It is a core policy that editors do not take Source X, then analyze whether they think framework Y is present or not. To say Source X engages in framework Y, one needs source Z stating as such. Further, that analysis must be attributed to source Z, as opposed to stated as pure fact that the framework applies.

Expanding on elements is important, but removing original research is just as critical if the article is to align with Wikipedia’s policies. Jacob Rampino (talk) 17:36, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Like I said, I will get around to addressing OR issues soon. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 10:37, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Maybe when I said "expanding the article" I should have articulated myself instead as "fixing OR issues". Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 10:40, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

My apologies, it was largely in response to your comment I'm not sure which areas in the article would qualify as OR (1). Jacob Rampino (talk) 15:08, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you mean then, that makes a lot more sense! Sorry, I lost track of my previous replies. Thank you for going into depth to resolve any confusion :) Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 18:46, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

References

Notes

NPOV noticeboard notification

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Requesting review of article "Protest paradigm" has been notified of this page. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 19:07, 16 October 2026 (UTC)