Intermedia Agenda Setting and Grassroots Collectives: Assessing Global Media’s Influence on Greek News Outlets

Abstract

This study focuses on a variety of grassroots collectives that emerged during the Greek economic crisis and aims to record activists’ own perceptions regarding the way that domestic media reacted after these collectives featured on the front pages of global news outlets. Drawing on 10 in depth interviews with activists participating in five grassroots collectives, this study brings together social movement and communications theoretical frameworks. Interviewees were asked about their perceptions regarding the role that global elite media coverage may have played in the salience of their endeavors in domestic media. Subsequently, we tested their personal testimonies by implementing a time series analysis on three Greek newspapers for a period of seven days before and after a front page publication in global elite media. Findings suggest that there is a big discrepancy between the perceived and the actual impact of global elite media on the agenda of domestic newspapers. To this end, further research should be undertaken to specify the exact characteristics that influence which grassroots collective will gain prominence in the public realm.