Media overrepresent violence, hiding that most claim-making is nonviolent.

Evidence

The high proportion of violent events in New Year’s Day reporting could, however, mislead you. Visibly violent events are much more often the lead story than are nonviolent events, even when the claims resemble each other. That is true for two reasons. First, disruptions of routine, especially violent disruptions of routine, receive much more attention in general from media than does conformity to routine; just think of a North American metropolitan newspaper’s “rape and murder” page. Second, collective violence often occurs when governmental power is at stake: civil wars rage, revolutions displace governments, governmental forces strike back at dissidents, dissidents mount attacks at governmental agents, or all at once. Threats to governmental power generate more news than does its maintenance. In all the countries on the roster, especially the less authoritarian ones, the great bulk of collective claim-making actually goes on without violence, and passes unreported by international media such as Reuters and the BBC. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 225

Categorization

• XREF: A selection-bias caveat that parallels the noise/silence salience biases in the reader’s communication-technology reading. — connects to: Violent contention typically grows out of nonviolent claim-making. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 726; Media harm comes from moral glamorization of violence, not reality confusion; News coverage massively overrepresents violent over nonviolent claim-making. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 225

Broader Connections

• Violent contention typically grows out of nonviolent claim-making. #corroborates (0.80) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 726
• Media harm comes from moral glamorization of violence, not reality confusion #complicates (0.75)