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The Whole World Watched and Now Looks Back: Journalists Analogize Pro-Palestinian Protests to Past Activist Movements
Journal article   Peer reviewed

The Whole World Watched and Now Looks Back: Journalists Analogize Pro-Palestinian Protests to Past Activist Movements

Ronald Bishop
Atlantic journal of communication, pp 1-15
16 Mar 2026

Abstract

A qualitative textual analysis was conducted on articles and accompanying pictures and videos created by journalists covering the pro-Palestinian encampments that referenced past activist movements. My analysis produced these primary themes: The Blueprint, Those Were the Days, Life in the Bubble, and The Same, Only Different. Analogies drawn by journalists between past protest movements and pro-Palestinian activism had all but ended by the summer of 2024. Journalists confirmed the stability of the protest paradigm by adding nostalgia-driven comparisons to past activism to its array of tools. Invocation of past movements affirmed that the encampments have had a negligible impact on the activists’ own making. The chief problem for journalists with pro-Palestinian protestors affirmed through analogy is not that they are violent or destructive—though those behaviors are evident—it is that it is at best an open question as to whether they compare favorably to their predecessors.

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