The battle for Seattle: protest and popular geopolitics in The Australian newspaper

“Popular geopolitics” demands that attention be given to examination of the role of the media in the construction and perpetuation of dominant geopolitical understandings. This paper gives specific attention to the ways in which Australia’s only national daily newspaper, The Australian, represented protests against the 3rd World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference held in Seattle during December 1999. News stories were presented within the context of a ‘protest paradigm’ which, through its central characteristics of story framing, drawing from official sources and invoking public opinion, made protest-critical viewpoints salient, and served to delegitimize, marginalize and demonize anti-WTO protestors. So presented, protestors and their actions provided a dramatic foil that added credibility to those people and organizations supportive of the WTO. Through these mechanisms, and in its role as an institution of everyday culture in Australia, The Australian contributed to the scripting of a neoliberal geopolitical hegemony.