Framing 'food riots': Subsistence protests in international and national media, 2007-2012

This chapter investigates some of the conceptual and methodological challenges of making sense of contemporary 'food riots', particularly the wave of protests reported worldwide during the period of the global food price spikes, around 2007–2012. It focuses on a discussion of media framing, looking at how different kinds of newspapers and other news sources with different audiences framed 'food riots' and related protests during the global food crisis period. The chapter discusses some of the issues arising in an effort to construct political event catalogues from national news sources in four countries such as, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Mozambique. The media often plays a crucial role in the contentious politics of provisions, and can be seen as a key factor in framing and amplifying popular grievances and interactions between protestors and policy and political elites. The role of the media also emerged as important in the context of weak functional channels of communication between protestors and government.