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The Professional Protester: Emergence of a New News Media Protest Coverage

In Time Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year Issue

Abstract

An ideological analysis was conducted of Time magazine’s 2011 Person of the

Year issue. Just as the image celebrates the renewed impact of organized protest and the

heroic actions of the protester, and foreshadows a change in our collective memory of

protest and dissent, it does so by continuing, through development of new themes, the

marginalization of activism. Time’s 2011 Person of the Year issue honoring the

achievements of “The Protester” is a primer on successful activism in the digital age.

“The Protester” has become the “exemplary model” of activism (Lule 2001: 15). Time’s

commemorative representation introduces readers to professional paradigm of protest.

Keywords: Newsmagazines, protest, activism, ideological analysis

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Introduction

On December 14, 2011, Time magazine Managing Editor Richard Stengel

announced on NBC’s Today Show that “The Protester” had been selected as the

publication’s “Person of the Year” for 2011. Among the well-known figures beaten out

for the honor were Admiral William McRaven, who led the Seal Team Six raid that

resulted in the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, Wisconsin Republican

Congressman Paul Ryan, known primarily for his controversial national budget plan, and

Kate Middleton, who became Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge upon her celebrated

marriage in April 2011 to Prince William, heir to the British throne. “There was a lot of

consensus among our people,” Stengel said. “It felt right” (“Time Magazine” 2011).

The year saw numerous activism-fueled triumphs for democracy, including the

Occupy Wall Street movement, whose grassroots activism begun in the spring of 2011

captured the nation’s attention and soon forced income inequality and corporate greed on

to the public agenda, the “Arab Spring,” the emergence of a civilian government in

Myanmar following the 2010 release of pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi after

15 years of house arrest (Beaumont 2011), and the decision to award the Nobel Peace

Prize to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, social worker and peace activist

Leymah Gbowee, also of Liberia, and Yemeni journalist Tawakkol Karman for “their

nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and women’s rights” (Savare 2011). These

developments and others compelled Time to celebrate the significance of what one of the

author’s students proudly called the “universal protester” (Qureshi 2011).

But an alternative reading of the Time Person of the Year issue is possible. I argue

that just as the award celebrates the renewed impact of organized protest and the heroic

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actions of the protester, and foreshadows a change in our collective memory of protest

and dissent, it does so by continuing the marginalization of the protester, or more

precisely, warning today’s protesters about what it would take to be once again be

marginalized. Time’s Person of the Year is contained in what amounts to a rhetorical

protest zone, from which dissent can emanate, but only in an image-centric way favored

by the media. The issue suggests the emergence of a professional paradigm, where focus

in news coverage is on how protest happens rather than on underlying issues or on the

impact of activism.

Theoretical Foundations and Literature Review

Evidence from news media coverage of protest supporting the well known

“protest paradigm” continues to accumulate. Journalists still tend to marginalize groups

that pursue unpopular causes or that challenge hallowed ideas and institutions. Groups

lacking money and other resources receive less coverage than well-heeled groups.

Activists are portrayed as deviant and erratic and as seeking out violent confrontation

with law enforcement. Journalists tend to interview only the spokespeople for activist

groups (Goldenberg 1975), while Gans (1979) contends broadcast journalists are more

likely to interview the most eccentric protesters. Reporters pay limited attention to the

ideas and ideals that compel protesters to action (Hertog and McLeod 1995), preventing

full discussion of issues raised today through increasingly media-savvy, technology-

driven activism. Their reliance on official sources and deployment of public opinion to

distance activists from the mainstream offers dominant institutions even more ideological

cover, as do the lengths to which journalists go to include the views of counter-

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demonstrators and representatives of dominant institutions in their coverage of activism

(Small 1994).

In his landmark book, The Whole World is Watching, Todd Gitlin argued

journalists at mainstream news organizations like Time tend to “process” activism. The

image of the protester is carefully controlled; reporters “absorb what can be absorbed into

the dominant structure of definitions and push the rest to the margins of social life”

(1980: 5). In covering Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s, journalists

from CBS News and the New York Times directed most of their attention to “single

grievances” offered by SDS members that could be addressed by those in power without

“altering fundamental social relations.” Reporters tended to cover “the event, not the

condition; the conflict, not the consensus; the fact that ‘advances the story,’ not the one

that explains it,” Gitlin asserted (122).

For SDS, this meant reporters undercounted their membership, relied on

government officials for information and perspective, suggested the group was unable to

disseminate its message, and intimated that Communists could be counted among its

members (Gitlin 1980: 122). And when interacting with protesters, reporters targeted

those who “closely matched prefabricated images of what an oppositional leader should

look and sound like: theatrical, bombastic, and knowing and inventive in the ways of

packaging messages” to attract a great deal of media attention (154).

Reporters refined these frames in their coverage of the Iraq War (Bishop 2003:

55-57). The diversity of the antiwar movement was cast as a weakness. It lacked focus

and struggled to define itself. Faceless, nameless protestors ran through the streets

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committing acts of destruction. Technology-savvy young people and aging Vietnam War

protestors propelled the activism, but the latter group was dismissed as irrelevant. Some

undertook protest only because it was fashionable. Journalists corrected their tendency to

undercount protestors, but their coverage revealed a near obsession with counting and the

number of protestors at each event. Their arguments were reduced to descriptions of signs

and chants. Reporters also suggested the antiwar movement came out of nowhere, and

lacked continuity with earlier activism. This brand of protest was unpatriotic, and was

largely practiced by older and eccentric individuals.

These frames exemplify a shift in news coverage of protest to what DiCicco has

called the “public nuisance” paradigm. Here, protest is portrayed as an annoying,

ineffective, unpatriotic activity. DiCicco contends the emergence of the public nuisance

paradigm coincides with the nation’s movement to the conservative side of the

ideological spectrum since the 9-11 terrorist attacks and a resultant tendency of

journalists to offer more time and space for conservatives to comment on events of the

day (2010: 136-137), mainly for fear of being labeled “liberal.” The growing popularity

of Fox News, both with the public and envious competitors who ended up copying their

approach to journalism, also has fueled the paradigm’s rise.

Characterizations of protestors still often land them squarely in what Hallin

(1986: 116-117) calls the “sphere of deviance” – a rhetorically defined place where

journalists and public officials position individuals who challenge public consensus on an

issue. Reporters build and fortify rhetorical boundaries between these individuals and the

public by condemning and excluding them. Movement of an individual and issue into

Hallin’s “sphere of legitimate controversy” is possible, but only if the dominant actors

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can define the terms of debate. Journalists working within this sphere pay particular

attention to objectivity, even if it means gutting the views of outliers. Protestors with

divergent views can only wish for entry into Hallin’s “sphere of consensus,” where the

institutions, ideas, and views we hold dear are kept and rhetorically protected. Here,

journalists do not afford dissenters the chance to weigh in on an issue or to provoke

dialogue.

Protest on the “Public Screen”

Complicating matters is the contention by DeLuca and Peeples that the “public

sphere” proposed and endorsed by Jurgen Habermas (1989) has been eclipsed by what

they call the “public screen” (2002: 127). Activists have recognized that to get their

messages across, they must create and stage television-friendly events. Their actions must

offer to journalists “novelty, polemic, confrontation, and controversy,” as Jha (2008)

notes. Protesters must become fully vested participants in a media culture “in which

images, sounds, and spectacles help produce the fabric of everyday life,” as Kellner

(1995: 1) contends, if they expect to influence people. Rather than bemoan, as others

have (e.g. Postman 1985), the coarsening of debate and a resultant decline in citizen

empowerment, the authors embrace what they see as a compelling image-centric means

of participating in a democracy (DeLuca and Peeples 2002: 127).

To capture a slot on the world’s agenda, activists must recast their messages so

they highlight “images over words, emotions over rationality, speed over reflection,

distraction over deliberation, slogans over arguments, the glance over the gaze,

appearance over truth, the present over the past” (Postman 1985: 133). Protest must be

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made to entertain. Only a spectacle will attract and hold the public’s attention. Where

Gitlin and Hallin might differ is with the authors’ assertion that ideas critical of

established power must take this shape if they are to succeed – “critique through

spectacle, not critique versus spectacle,” as DeLuca and Peeples claim (134). The authors

convey the impression that while opportunities to enter the public discourse were

previously unavailable to activists, or were frustrated by narrow readings by journalists of

their actions, a spot on the “public screen” is now relatively easy for the media-savvy

activist to obtain.

To make an impression, an activist’s message must break through the glut of

information directed at the typical media consumer. They struggle to reach an

overwhelmed audience whose “focused gaze has been replaced by the distracted look of

the optical unconscious” (DeLuca & Peeples, 135). Information and argument give way

to drama and manufactured controversy. Time must now spent gearing up for what

DeLuca and Peeples call “imagefare” (139). The audience expects such stagecraft, the

authors contend, even if it becomes an obstacle to genuine change or results in news

coverage of activism that lacks depth. Too much attention is paid to how the audience

makes meaning of activism, at the expense of what they might make that meaning with.

The same holds true for journalists compiling information for stories on activism and

protest. Jha (2008) found that while the reporters she interviewed took note of the skill

with which activist groups created their websites, they tended not to rely on those sites as

sources of information. Instead, they covered how these activists used the Internet to

organize protests. As one journalist told Jha, “There was a sense of ‘gee whiz-ness’ about

protesters using the internet” (717). Journalists reached out to activist websites only when

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a protest was imminent; they maintained ongoing contact with official sources, Jha found.

And when journalists did contact activist groups, they sought out their official

spokespersons (720).

Research Questions

What happens when the story of an act whose practitioners are so often

marginalized is told to commemorate the major events of a year? Journalists have come

to consider themselves “the public historians of American culture,” as Carolyn Kitch

observes (1999: 121). Leaving behind objectivity and augmenting mere observation, they

see themselves as the arbiters of who and what is culturally significant. A “blend of

authority and interpretation” enables newsmagazines like Time to “explain what

American life ‘means’ at any given moment and over time,” Kitch notes (2003: 188). To

guide the meaning their audience makes of the past, journalists turn to story forms quite

familiar to their readers. “They tell the same stories they have told before and will tell

again,” Kitch claims, populating them with characters “who stand for something larger

than themselves” (2002: 296). Past, present, and future events are combined into “a

single, ongoing tale” (1999: 122) that sustains the journalist’s authority as keeper of

public memory, a role built on the audience’s confidence in the journalist’s “access to the

truth” (Bird & Dardenne 1997: 345) and its fluency in and comfort with certain

narratives. Retelling of stories provides “a confirming, reinforcing version” of our values,

and ourselves as Fiske and Hartley argue (1978: 85-86) as we use the content to make

sense of what is happening in the world.

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Our familiarity with these narratives comes at a cost (Barthes 1972; Hall, 2000):

the neutralization of acts or ideas that challenge hallowed beliefs and values or which

urge significant change. This is caused by our inability to detect the “ideological nature”

of the narratives, as Stiles and Kitch (2011: 117) assert, and is particularly evident when

the news media engage in commemoration, as they did in the issue that is the subject of

this research. Familiar stories have taken on the shape of myth (Lule 2001) whose

function now is to “offer exemplary models for human life.” When immersed in myth, we

are less interested in exploring unconventional ideas than we are in protecting “prevailing

ideals, ideologies, values, and beliefs” (15).

With the foregoing in mind, this paper seeks answers to these questions:

o What does the Time Person of the Year issue ask readers to think about the

effectiveness of recent protests?

o What is the preferred reading of recent protest suggested by the Time

content?

o What is Time asking its readers to think about the typical protester?

o Does the commemoration of “The Protester” by Time signal the

emergence of a new paradigm for news media coverage of protest by

journalists?

Method

In May 2012, the author conducted several close readings of content created by

Time’s editors, writers, and photographers for its 2011 Person of the Year (December 26,

2011/January 2, 2012) issue. Analyzed were the cover image of “The Protester,” a one-

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page introductory piece by Time managing editor Rick Stengel about the factors that

fueled the magazine’s POY decision, writer Kurt Andersen’s lengthy story about “The

Protester,” a two-page spread of 40 protester photos preceding Andersen’s piece, all

accompanying photos and two sidebars, and a two-page map carrying the headline “The

Protest Network” that highlighted the efforts, progress, and struggles of protestors around

the world. Images and text were repeatedly and methodically studied; the author took

extensive notes as the analysis progressed. Repeated readings allowed for the refinement

of primary themes. Because the ideology of protest contained in the POY issue was of

primary concern, news media coverage of Time’s announcement of its POY decision was

excluded from analysis.

A compelling ideological analysis begins with the researcher asking, “What does

the artifact ask us to believe, understand, feel, or think about” (Foss, 1996)? Special

attention must be paid, Sonja Foss argues, to those groups whose interests are represented

in the dominant ideology and to those groups whose interests are “negated.” The

researcher should explore those rhetorical elements that “promote one ideology over

others” (297). And while opposing or divergent views are permitted to exist, the

dominant ideology “defines the limits within which” they are expressed, as Cloud notes

(1994: 304). In the end, alternative perspectives are made to seem abnormal, Foss

explains. This is part of the “symbolic coercion” described by Foss that enables powerful

institutions to control what we see as “natural or obvious” (295). Strategic deployment of

rhetorical elements, like those explored in this paper, is a key means of defending and

renewing the dominant ideology.

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Texts like the Time Person of the Year issue suggest preferred readings that

encourage formation of subject positions, or the manner in which the audience is

positioned to receive and interpret the text. The meaning made by readers of the image is

“constructed, given, produced through cultural practices; it is not simply found in things”

(du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, & Negus 1997: 14). Readers are moved toward an

interpretation desired by Time’s editors of the events summarized in the Person of the

Year image. We are brought together as a community to receive Time’s take on what the

act of protest means at this important point in time (Kitch 2003: 188). But as will be

discussed in the following section, the ideological direction suggested by the image also

continues to marginalize some perspectives on and aspects of protest.

Discussion

The Cover Image

On the POY issue’s cover, readers see an enhanced rendering of a young woman

wearing a wool hat and scarf in such a way that only her penetrating eyes are visible.

Over her shoulders in the background are shadow-like images of Occupy Wall Street

protestors. Over her face are the capitalized words “THE PROTESTER.” This label

positions Time’s activist as anonymous. The impression is heightened by the hat and scarf

worn by the protester. Rather than name one of the activists -- Aung San Suu Kyi, for

example – to represent the resurgent significance of activism, Time instead subsumed

strands of activism in a single image. “The Protester” may embody the universality of

this new wave of protest, but she is nameless, just one of thousands of brave individuals

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who have pushed for democratic governments abroad and who have sought to empower

the “99 percent” in the U.S. through the Occupy movement.

The configuration of elements in the image suggests “The Protester” is a follower,

not a charismatic leader whose image might more easily become a rallying point. A lack

of identity, underscored by Time’s choice to use an illustration rather than one of the

many photos of protesters their photographers had taken, conveys an unwillingness – or

outright fear – to be named as part of the cause. Her attire also suggests she is constantly

having to fend off the government’s attempts to neutralize the protests. She is probably

on the run, which heightens the sense of ineffectiveness. The fact the scarf is covering her

mouth affirms the tendency of officials to reject dialogue as configured by the protesters,

and compels the conclusion that confrontation – or occupation – is the only option

available to them. Words have been tried, but they have failed. Violence – the kind

expected of protesters with charter memberships in Hallin’s “sphere of deviance” – is

their only option. The absence of officials in the image – as well as the institutions the

protesters want so desperately to change – suggests they are intact or reforming, as in the

case of the new Egyptian government. The system endures, as Jamieson and Waldman

(2002) might predict. Location of the headline across her face and a line of text – “from

the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow” – a little below where

her mouth would be if not for the scarf – also could be interpreted as confirming the

futility of protest continued in this fashion. It is as if she has been muzzled.

The Time protester is passing Cindy Sheehan and other Iraq War protesters on

their way into the public eye from Hallin’s “sphere of deviance.” Their success in

mobilizing large numbers of people and effecting significant change – and the concurrent

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increase in news media coverage – moved the causes they champion into the “sphere of

legitimate controversy,” as Hallin might observe. Thanks to the work of journalists, more

discussion about the protests represented in the Time image has likely occurred. Still, “the

protester’s” presence on the cover of a magazine published by a multibillion dollar media

conglomerate indicates that a particular way of shaping the debate has been achieved –

the “tennis match” style of reporting that so infuriates critics of the U.S. media system

but which ensures that objectivity is sustained (Schudson 1978, 2003). As Hallin notes,

debate is allowed to happen while parties occupy the sphere of legitimate controversy,

but only according to the terms set by the more powerful participants so that the

environment in which advertisers hawk their wares is not spoiled (Andersen 1995).

The protester’s anonymity indicates that she has had her say, and is now

contained. She now finds herself enjoying the relative safety of a “protest zone” in the

cover provided by Time’s editors. A frequently used law enforcement tool, protest zones

enable police to keep protesters at what they believe is a sufficient distance from the

public and penned in so they are easier to control. Activists are allowed to express

themselves, but the impact of their words and actions is attenuated. Journalists contribute

to the attenuation of protest when they cover establishment of the zone at the expense of a

protester’s message. The protester’s hat reinforces this sense of relocation. Having just

spent months braving the elements and dodging overreacting officials and their violent

supporters, the protester still must hold court outdoors with her colleagues, like the

Occupy protestors recently moved by law enforcement officials from their encampments.

They have stimulated dialogue and effected change, but in this image remain far from the

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halls of power, which, in the case of Egypt, are occupied by many of the same military

officials who served under ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The protester’s covered visage also suggests that despite her heroic efforts,

women in societies where democracy has been newly established or is on its way to being

established still do not enjoy full equality. Further, zealousness in her eyes suggests

inflexibility and dogmatism – or frustration at having worked this hard, come this far,

only to find continued misogyny. By covering her face, Time has inadvertently invoked

the image of a terrorist – in our time, perhaps the ultimate act of marginalization. Such a

decision provides journalists with the means to relocate the protester in the “sphere of

deviance” should her actions dictate.

The protester’s prominence primarily references the Arab Spring. Conversely, the

Occupy movement is relegated to the image’s background, to monochromatic hints of

their presence in the scarf covering the protester’s mouth and nose. On their signs are

only vague references to their desire to find “good jobs” (to the protester’s left) and a call

for younger protesters to capture power and distance themselves from the “ivory tower.”

These vague images reference frequent claims by journalists that the Occupy movement

lacked a clear message and might have been trying to accomplish too much. Missing

from the image is any suggestion of whom the protesters were fighting; we do not see

banks, corporations, or representations of Wall Street, nor do we see the oppressive Arab

leaders who have cracked down on the protesters.

The choice by Time to represent other protesters in shadow – they appear etched

on the main image, suggesting fragile glass – conveys an impression of obsolescence. A

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faint image of a protester with arms outstretched near the main protester’s right cheek and

jaw seems to reference the young woman wailing near a Kent State student killed by

National Guard troops in 1970 or perhaps the “black power” given by athletes John

Carlos and Tommie Smith on the medal stand at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico

City. To her lower left are the images three anguished shouting protesters that could just

as easily have appeared in a horror film dream sequence. Most of the images in and near

her face and scarf are indistinguishable, but the intent in including them is clear: to

suggest that protest, no matter how zealously undertaken or temporarily successful – is a

strident, dangerous, destructive activity. The fact the protester’s hoodie is black

reinforces an impression of protesters injured and killed for their cause.

Notably absent is suggestion of the frequently reported role of social media in

galvanizing recent activism. Kitch (2003: 193) might argue that Facebook and Twitter,

heralded by journalists as new catalysts for dissent, have been “erased” from this image.

The protester is not tweeting, shooting a video for YouTube, or using Facebook to update

others on her progress, nor are there discernible references to social media in the

background images. Time’s editors may have omitted social media as a nod to their older

readers. And since the cover image positions the reader in a face-to-face confrontation

with the protester, social media might not be necessary, unless she would go on to post

about the events while remaining anonymous here. Referencing social media would have

confirmed the full impact of recent protest – perhaps too full for some readers who might

consider it too intrusive or destructive. This contradicts the claim of DeLuca and Peeples

that representations of life are now made to unfold on the “public screen” rather than in

the public sphere. But make no mistake: Time’s protester is made for TV. She has a

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strong televisual presence, a nod to the assertion that collective memory is now fueled

largely by “image events.”

The protesters in the background are doing the legwork while the Time protester

acts as their more press-friendly public face. Time’s foregrounding of the protester asserts

her tactics are about as far as protesters can go if the dominant institutions – even in their

slightly more democratic form across the Middle East – are to be preserved. New

governments and old institutions remain “too big to fail.” The press will no longer look

for the scruffy, eccentric protester when covering future activism. She is made for the

media: interchangeable, not terribly controversial, and anonymous – to the point of being

in hiding – yet somehow omnipresent. She is a protester perfect for an age characterized

by a love of prefabricated celebrities.

The Stengel Introduction

Appearing on page 53 of the POY issue, Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel’s

introduction to the Kurt Andersen cover story is laid out in the shape of a closed and

raised fist. The copy is white; the background is black. It suggests the “black power”

salute given by Carlos and Smith. Playing the cultural arbiter’s role explained by Kitch,

Stengel opens the piece by reminding readers “history often emerges only in retrospect.

Events become significant only when looked back upon.” He then describes the sheer

scope of recent protest, suggesting that a single incident – a resident of Tunisia setting

himself on fire “in a public square in a town barely on a map” – spurred activism by 3

billion people around the world. This one action would eventually “rattle regimes in

Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain,” for example. Emboldened protestors took on drug cartels in

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Mexico, ineffective leaders in Greece, income inequality in the U.S., and “a corrupt

autocracy” in Russia. Invoking the title of a recent best-selling book (Gladwell 2000),

Stengel ascribed the sudden rise in activism to a “global tipping point for frustration.”

But arguing that activism crystallized so quickly, affecting billions of people,

Stengel downplayed its success. Past research (Bishop 2003) asserts that the tendency of

journalists to count protesters, born of criticism that they had undercounted in the past,

pushes aside discussion of issues. To be sure, Stengel celebrated the bravery of

protesters; they did not relent, even when met with “a cloud of tear gas or a hail of

bullets.” But the ensuing sentences conveyed the sense that despite their bravery, so

much – perhaps too much – remains to be done. He refers twice to the “idea of

democracy,” as if activists are still trying to figure out what it means and how to achieve

it. It is a concept in a perennial state of testing. Stengel then argues protesters “literally

embodied the idea that individual actions can bring collective, colossal change.” Like

discussing the “idea” of democracy, using the word “can” could lead a reader to conclude

that these activists are still trying to make the most of their potential, and that all activism

struggles to bring about significant change.

Stengel’s use of past tense prematurely consigns recent activism to history.

Recent protest “was understood [author’s italics] differently in different places.” This

“was not a technological revolution,” he wrote. Protesters “kept” in touch with another

with the latest technological devices. The revolution “was [author’s italics] a human one,

of hearts and minds.” Such phrasing suggests protesters have completed their task, and

that we should be prepared to move on. And despite the success enjoyed by protestors,

Stengel chose to write extensively of ideals, giving recent activism a preliminary feel.

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“The meaning of democracy is that the people rule,” Stengel explained. “And they did, if

not at the ballot box” – where systemic change in a democracy is achieved – “then in the

streets.” Invoking the language of technology, he said protest “is in some ways the source

code for democracy – and evidence of the lack of it.” Stengel applauds the grass-roots

origin of the movement’s leaders, but the timidity in his rhetoric conveys a sense that

their influence is limited to the movement alone.

Achieving all of this is “a new generation,” one that can avail itself effectively of

new gadgets. They are skillful and media savvy. We no longer have to be concerned with

the erratic and drug-addled behavior of participants in the 1960s counterculture. Stengel

accurately argues social media and new devices “did not cause these movements” –

nuance missed by many of his colleagues – “but they kept them alive and connected.”

Facebook and Twitter “allowed us to watch,” comfortable on the sidelines – also our

vantage point for recent wars, thanks to sporadic news coverage attenuated further by

embedding of reporters – “and it spread the virus of protest.” Stengel’s use of the word

“virus” is his only pejorative reference to the protesters, the only example of the “protest

paradigm” found in this text.

That recent protest is still in its preliminary stages was highlighted further by

Stengel’s acknowledgement that protesters had tapped into “a global sense of restless

promise.” They had successfully “shined a light on human dignity.” Stengel juxtaposed

this inadvertent assessment of the work left to be done with premature congratulations; he

credited protesters with “upending governments and the conventional wisdom.” Kitch

would argue such language is typical of journalistic commemoration. But like recent

coverage of the war, it leaves readers with an incomplete sense of the protesters’

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investment in their cause and of the intractability of the oppression they fight. Time’s

embrace of the protesters’ achievements is not without some skittishness. Stengel

concluded the piece by hailing activists “for steering the planet on a more democratic

through sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st Century.” Some rough edges left

over from the 1960s and from the “nuisance paradigm” still have to be smoothed. Time’s

journalists clearly are not possessed by nostalgia for protest from these earlier periods.

Introductory Photo Spread

On page 54 and 55 of the POY issue, Time’s editors ran 40 photos of protesters

from around the world in four rows sandwiching a large, white type on black background

all caps headline: “THE PROTESTER.” All but one of the photos is of an individual.

Several of the photos – for example, one of Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis, who

was arrested for his support of Occupy Philadelphia protestors – appeared adjacent to

Andersen’s cover story, enlarged, cropped, or blown up, as was the case with the Lewis

photo. Lewis appeared from the waist up in the photo assemblage; the photo adjacent to

the Andersen story was tightly cropped around his face. Pull out quotes appeared in or

opposite the photos. Text of the quotes appeared in black type, their attributions in grey

type; both texts and attributions were capitalized. Several new photos, including one of a

hand holding a spent tear gas canister launched at protesters in Egypt and a smaller photo

of a broken iPhone owned by a Syrian anti-government protester, also appeared with

Andersen’s story.

The photos, particularly the close-ups, at first resemble mug shots, suggesting that

despite their success in moving their causes on to the public’s agenda, protestors can still

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often thought of as rabble rousers, even criminals. This technique is popular with

journalists who cover celebrities, as in Newsweek’s annual Oscar Roundtable issue. Tight

close-ups of Oscar contenders appeared both in the print issue and in the magazine’s

online Oscar coverage. But more tellingly, the photos recall several recent well-known

Benetton advertising campaigns. For some time, the company has engaged in what Tinic

(1997) called “controversy advertising,” in which an issue is raised, but neither solutions

nor information for readers wishing to volunteer or offer support are offered. The

company has expressed the belief that politically charged images more effectively

promote their clothing than the clothing itself; the images enable Benetton to market

“beyond the sale” (Falk, 1997: 66). But this approach also decontextualizes protesters and

their impact. Here, the protesters have been pulled from the front lines, or are

reconstituting their experiences there, to have these photos taken. The photo spread

highlights their deftness with technology and their ability to attract media attention and

suggests a belief by Time’s editors that readers would be more comfortable engaging with

these activists if they were packaged like celebrities. Symbolism and theater are the most

significant aspects of current activism. Moreover, packaging protesters in this fashion

dilutes their ability to recruit additional protesters. These images do not urge readers to

grab a protest sign and “radically change the world we live in” (Williamson, 1978: 14).

Andersen’s Cover Story

The focus on process is confirmed in Andersen’s lead paragraph:

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Once upon a time, when major news events were chronicled strictly by

professionals and printed on paper or transmitted through the air by the

few for the masses, protesters were prime makers of history (56).

When activists “took to the streets” during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s “to declare

themselves opposed [author’s italics],” Andersen explained, “it was the very definition of

news.” He described protest as “the natural continuation of politics by other means,” as if

it ever occurred without opposition. And then, suddenly, protest disappeared from the

cultural scene, Andersen suggests, pushed aside by two decades of greatly improved

living standards. “Credit was easy, complacency and apathy were rife,” he wrote. Our

affluence-fueled indifference, Andersen noted, caused us to view protests as “obsolete,

quaint, the equivalent of cavalry to mid-20th-Century war.” Even large-scale protests like

the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999 were “ineffectual” and “irrelevant.”

We experienced dissent only in “pop-culture fantasy,” in popular music and the

Matrix film series. Then, out of nowhere, thanks to the Occupy movement and the Arab

Spring, protest “became the defining trope of our time,” Andersen claimed. The protester,

celebrated by his magazines, “once again became a maker of history.” Unmooring current

protest from its turbulent past makes it more palatable for Time’s readers, but more

significantly, it rhetorically clears the decks so that Time’s editors can begin to lay the

groundwork for a new myth of protest. It is the story that Time wishes that we retell, a

story about an approach to dissent that actually produces a “confirming, reinforcing

version” of our values, as Fiske and Hartley contend. It is “as needed” versus ongoing

protest – a sort of “add water and stir” myth. Andersen intimates there was nothing in the

way of impactful organized dissent between 1848 – “that unprecedented, uncanny year of

22

insurrection” – and today. He argued that events precipitating the Arab Spring and

Occupy protests differed from those that caused the disintegration of the former Soviet

Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Those came about due to “a single

disintegration at headquarters, one big switch pulled in Moscow” (66).

Andersen’s use of personalization as a storytelling technique reinforces the sense

that protest in places other than the U.S. comes together quickly. He returns to the story

of the death of a Tunisian produce vendor who set himself on fire after enduring

humiliating treatment by officials. That single tragic incident caused a protest to

crystallize. A video was posted on YouTube. Al-Jazeera picked up the story. Postings on

Facebook were made. Police retaliate, killing more than dozen protesters. “Spontaneous

protests? In 2011? In an Arab police state? Heroic, hopeless, doomed,” Andersen wrote.

But it took Tunisian activists just four weeks to force out the nation’s oppressive

government. They gave hope – and instructions – to folks in other nations. One activist

told Andersen their efforts were “like a user manual in how to topple a regime

peacefully” (70). Activists in Egypt were emboldened. They were prepared for the

government’s attempted crackdown in response. Folks who had never before taken part

in a protest were there. It was a diverse group. And eventually, Hosni Mubarak stepped

down. It was “like bringing down a fake god,” one protester said (70). This was the

generation of protesters who could “break the fear barrier.” The “impossible fantasies”

held by the protesters in these nations started to come to true. Their “democratic dream

had” quickly “achieved breathtaking momentum;” it was soon realized in a number of

other Arab nations, and then in Europe and in Israel (72).

23

Andersen explained for readers more of the causes of unrest: a fraudulent election

in Egypt; a stumbling U.S. economy exacerbated by official attempts to destroy unions

and placate the wealthy by refusing to raise their taxes; and economic inequity in Russia

that will likely continue after Vladimir Putin’s re-election. “[T]he loathing and anger at

governments and their cronies became uncontainable and fed on itself,” Andersen wrote.

This conveys the impression that protesters, however justified, were irrational. Protesters

in the U.S. had it comparatively easy. Arab Spring protestors were aware “that some of

them might be beaten or shot, not just pepper-sprayed or flex cuffed,” Andersen wrote.

And they’re ungrateful. Protestors in other parts of the world “are literally dying to get

political systems that roughly resemble the ones that seem intolerably undemocratic to

protesters in Madrid, Athens, London, and New York City.”

The historical forces that purportedly caused activism to disappear rendered

protest irrelevant, even obsolete. “Street protests looked like pointless emotional

sideshows,” Andersen explained (58). A new, more genuine and less theatrical, model of

protest was needed, one that could be applied only when conditions deteriorate. Since the

advent of modern democracy, he wrote, “astonishing protests and uprisings have spiked

and spread once every half-century or so.” But despite the cyclical nature of protest,

“each time people are freshly shocked and bedoozled” (89). Protests that took place in

between these swells – the protests against the WTO in Seattle, for example – were

dismissed as ineffective and destructive. But now, protest has suddenly become “the

defining trope of our time.” Observers are shocked then unable to catch their breath – so

rapid is the reemergence of protest. The protester’s message is easily dismissed in the

rush. But the protester can abruptly again become “a maker of history” (58).

24

It is worth noting that nowhere in the article does Andersen suggest that recent

protests have impacted policy. This is not surprising, given the public historian’s role

assumed by journalists when they create commemorative pieces. But abruptly consigning

events to history permits the conclusion that another cycle has begun, thus protecting the

status quo. Andersen suggests that while there is much to connect the two groups of

protesters – “everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated” –

they came together independently, “without much encouragement from or endorsement”

by political parties or veteran activists. Andersen distances today’s protesters from their

older counterparts by citing criticism of Occupy by these “old schoolers” for “lacking

prefab ideology.” Protesters did not do what the dominant narrative of 1960s protest

suggests disaffected youth should do – “tune in, turn on, drop out,” for example. “Instead

of plugging in the headphones, entering an Internet-induced fugue state and quietly

giving into the hopelessness” – they got angry and began to protest. Andersen ignores the

fact that several strands of protest flourished in the 1960s.

They were content to enjoy the wealth – “there was enough money trickling down

to keep them happyish,” Andersen wrote – but now, they “feel like suckers.” While their

discontent “had been simmering for years,” they had little desire to act on it. Elation at

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 turned once again into disenchantment after the Wall

Street bailouts and the rise to prominence of the Tea Party movement. Andersen suggests

activist groups fill slots only temporarily on our agenda; even the well covered Tea Party

“outlasted its expected shelf life,” he said (61). The protesters’ main worry was having

the promise of the “good life” taken away. “They were fed up, and the frustration and the

anger exploded after the regimes overreached,” he wrote, failing to mention the policies s

25

of these governments designed to stifle dissent. And since we had given up caring about

democratic principles when history “ended,” they were reduced to not getting one’s share

when anger at the powers that be resurfaced (61).

Andersen contrasted the sudden success of the Arab Spring with the raucous, at

times violent behavior of protesters who in the 1960s took the nation on such a turbulent

ride. Today’s protesters are to be admired for “bringing down regimes and immediately

changing the course of history,” Andersen asserted. They had “more skin in the game”

than the antiwar protesters who self-indulgently put on “a countercultural pageant” that

only divided the country (66). Stripped of its hippie pomp, this is the kind of protest the

nation can support. Andersen draws several additional distinctions between the Occupy

and Arab Spring protesters. Arab Spring protesters are brave; they risk their lives for their

causes. They were attacked, beaten, harassed, shot, injured, and killed. Occupy protesters

are positioned as hopeful but disorganized, at times clumsy – and envious of their

counterparts’ bravery. “I think other parts of the world have more balls than we do,” said

one Occupy Oakland protester (61). While Arab Spring protesters jumped intrepidly into

the fray, the Occupy movement needed a jolt of coalescing inspiration from two

magazine editors. The Occupy movement is positioned as evolving, under construction,

while Arab Spring protesters are, in Andersen’s words, “ready to rumble in Egypt and

Tunisia” if the fragile democracies they helped to launch “seem too compromised.” The

Arab Spring protesters have set an example; they are vital, on the move, making progress;

members of the Occupy movement have a lot to learn. They needed time to figure out

how to emulate the protests on the other side of the world. In fact, they still had to figure

out “what ‘Occupy Wall Street’ might mean” (73).

26

Kalle Lasn and Micah White, the Adbusters magazine editors who founded the

Occupy movement, had for some time been “preaching to its choir” about these issues.

Yet throughout the piece, Andersen suggests the movement’s beginnings were modest.

Lasn and White had, for example, cajoled their “smallish cadre of Twitter followers”

with the “dream of insurrection of corporate rule.” So while Arab Spring protesters had

quickly mobilized, the Occupy movement had to be “nudged” to accept the idea of a

public encampment. They did not rush to the encampments. They “showed up,”

Andersen noted, as if to suggest it was a struggle. There was no “immediate call for

specific legislation or executive action.”

The day OWS took up residence in Zucotti Park, it was “sunny, mid-60s, perfect,”

he wrote (73). So while protesters in Tunisia and Egypt were dodging bullets and fending

off overzealous police and soldiers, the conditions had to be perfect for Occupy activists

to take part. Andersen’s nephew, an Occupy supporter who wanted to stay at the

encampment, ran immediately into a lack of professionalism. The information desk “was

staffed by someone who wasn’t very articulate,” he recalled. The person “wasn’t the face

of what I thought this should be” (74). So he became deeply involved in what Andersen

characterized as a “corporate management retreat – except outdoors, with everyone

voting by means of kooky hand signals and making sure the anarchists are heard” (74).

Further frustrating his nephew was the “craziness,” the “sense of entitlement, anger,

resentment” he perceived in the actions of the protesters. OWS was clearly spinning its

wheels, hampered by dissension in its ranks. He remained at the encampment until the

night the police evicted Occupy from the park; they were told to “scram,” Andersen

explained, as if they were misbehaving children. The inclusiveness – the stock in trade of

27

the “old schoolers” – was reassuring, but ineffective, and it paled in comparison to the

bravery shown by activists elsewhere. Andersen asserted the OWS activists are amateurs.

“I would have zero patience for the process,” he told his nephew (74). Instead of doing

street theater and boasting, as Lasn and White did, that OWS had already become “the

greatest social justice movement to emerge in the United States sine the Civil Rights era,”

(p. 89), they should come up with a plan and get to work, he suggests. Absence of a clear

idea of the progress an activist group wants to accomplish is an indirect defense of

dominant institutions.

But even the braver and more organized AS protesters – practitioners of “do-it-

yourself democratic politics” (78) – soon found that “democracy is difficult and

sometimes a little scary.” Having ended several oppressive regimes, they learned that

“aftermaths are never as splendid as uprisings,” Andersen wrote. To be sure, they should

not adopt a truly egalitarian approach – the OWS model. “Once everybody has a say,

everybody has a say [author’s italics],” Andersen stressed. Instead, they must focus on

overcoming the “hubris of youth” – and turn the next phases of change over to “better

disciplined political organizations.” These nascent democracies will thrive if they

recognize their own “naïveté about the realities of democratic policies (78).”

Andersen suggested the Occupy movement has even further to go. Their hubris is

debilitating. Precepts that had traction in the 1960s are no longer appropriate in an era of

globalization. Just holding on to the “moral high ground” (82) will no longer be enough.

“The youth and the other liberals don’t yet have the stomach for democratic,” Andersen

explained. They are hampered by their “need for absolute consensus” on issues, which

Andersen suggested may “devolve into a feckless Bartlebyism – passive resistance,

28

preferring not to” (82). Occupy protesters were even unable to properly understand the

role of social media in expediting activism. “Calling the Arab uprisings Facebook and

YouTube and Twitter revolutions is not, it turns out, just glib, wishful American

overstatement,” Andersen noted. These tools “helped enable and turbocharge” physical

protest, “allowing protesters to mobilize more nimbly and communicate with one another

and wider world more effectively.” As if lecturing a university class, Andersen reminded

readers “new media and blogger are now quasi synonyms for protest and protester”

(author’s italics). While their Arab Spring counterparts are busy changing the world,

Occupy protesters must continue to build their organization and enlist new members.

They will have to be satisfied with continuing to keep their causes on the national agenda,

and will not relent “until they get some satisfaction” (89). Because this kind of

professional protest will continue to be the “defining political mode” – Occupy protesters

will be catching up as they learn from their braver, less self-involved counterparts.

Additional Photos and Sidebars

Included as part of the Person of the Year issue were three sidebars and a world

map depicting “The Protest Network.” Photos of protesters and protest artifacts, some

repeated from the two-page introductory spread, punctuated the story copy. In the first

sidebar, readers learned “How To Occupy A Square” (61), drawing on the experience of

the Arab Spring protesters. In the introduction, Andersen noted that the year’s protests

“were often long-term affairs.” Future protesters were instructed to set up checkpoints to

exclude officials bent on ending protests, build a stage from which to “broadcast chants,

speeches, and concerts to the crowd,” and to make sure there was enough electricity to

run their devices. A proper protest library should be set up, featuring “reading material”

29

from authors like Howard Zinn. Andersen called Zinn’s book A People’s History of the

United States “a seminal leftist revision of American history.” Protesters found much

inspiration from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. The “celebrity Slovenian

philosopher” Slavoj Zizek, author of Welcome to the Desert of the Real, addressed OWS

protesters. He continues to be a “cheerleader from afar” (74). And finally, prospective

protesters must learn how to properly use Twitter. Andersen instructs protesters three

times to minimize the amount of political content in their tweets.

The theme of technology continues in the map of protest, beginning with the two-

page spread’s headline: “The Protest Network.” The copy notes that protest, once it

started in Algeria, quickly went “viral.” This references illness as well as technology.

“Their demands were very different, but they found inspiration in one another,” reads the

copy under the headline. This sentiment is echoed in additional copy that stretches across

the bottom of both pages that describes how protesters in one country have been inspired

by the earlier efforts of protestors in other countries. Time’s editors reinforce the

progression with arrows between each description. To organize for readers the spread of

protest, they are numbered, beginning with demonstrations in Algeria, Tunisia, and

Egypt, and concluding with protests in Burma and Russia. Circular photos of varying

sizes accompany short descriptions of what protesters have thus far achieved and the

setbacks they have experienced. Protesters are shown shouting, enduring tear gas, holding

signs, marching, and throwing rocks.

The photos that appear adjacent to Andersen’s cover story continue the Benetton

theme suggested by the introductory spread. The first photo is of Mannoubia Bouazizi,

the mother of the produce vendor whose decision to set himself on fire was the catalyst

30

for revolution in Tunisia. Some of the photos, like the one of Bouazizi, are accompanied

by short recollections or reflections about the protests and their impact. “The people want

the fall of the field marshal,” read a sign held by an Egyptian protester (64). “When God

wants to bring in change, he needs a vehicle of change, and I became that vehicle,” said a

protester from India. A woman from Wisconsin holding a sign which reads, “resist,

recall, replace, rejoice” claims she will run for office. Time affirms in these photos that

protesters must craft their messages so they favor “images over words, emotions over

rationality, speed over reflection, distraction over deliberation, slogans over arguments,

the glance over the gaze, appearance over truth, the present over the past,” as DeLuca and

Peeples contend (133). Such an approach improves a protester’s chances of gaining

attention by making the protester safe for the public to consume.

Conclusions

Time’s 2011 Person of the Year issue honoring the achievements of “The

Protester” asks us to view it as a primer on successful activism in the digital age. For

Time’s editors, “The Protester” has become the “exemplary model” of activism, as Lule

would suggest (2001: 15). Arab Spring protesters captured the world’s attention and

earned its admiration for bravely taking on, and in several cases defeating, oppressive

regimes. Occupy protesters in the U.S. successfully moved their causes on to the national

agenda. Time’s commemoration affirms the new “prefabricated image” (Gitlin 1980:

122) to used by the public and by journalists to shape their perception of and guide their

interaction with, activists.

31

The issue’s content suggests both groups are skilled at “imagefare,” ensuring that

journalists like those who work for Time will continue to receive a steady diet of

compelling images suggestive of celebrity about their activities. Journalists will likely

continue to overemphasize their use of social media. Moreover, they have effected

significant change with their aggressive push toward “do-it-yourself democracy.” But

Time’s editors, reporters, and photographers suggest that to achieve even more, protesters

must channel their passion into working within the system. They must continue what

Time characterizes as an evolution from nuisance to professional. Their efforts must be

more polished. They have successfully pushed their causes into Hallin’s “sphere of

legitimate controversy,” but any hope of entry into the “sphere of consensus” hinges on

ridding their efforts of last vestiges of marginalized 1960s-style protest. These must be

neutralized. Occupy protesters have further to go in this regard. They need to become

braver and better organized. They must no longer simply present for comment their most

eccentric members to the news media. Failure to adapt will cause them to remain, in

Gitlin’s words, at the “margins of social life.” As it is, Occupy protesters are mired in a

perpetual state of becoming. Imagery of past protests is invoked to remind readers that a

return to those tactics will move Occupy activists off the public’s agenda. Such are the

pitfalls of activism undertaken on the “public screen,” where journalists laud protesters as

much for their ability to skillfully convey images using the latest in technology as for

bravery in the face of a brutal regime.

32

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