Framing Contests Between Dutch Activists and Local News Media: The Eurodusnie Anarchist Group, Leiden, 1997–2002

In order to gain a better understanding of the dynamics between activists and mainstream media, this paper analyses the ways in which the Dutch, Leiden-based anarchist collective Eurodusnie (1997–2002) responded to negative publicity. While many have described the relationship between social movements and the mass media as asymmetric, assigning a dominant role to mass media, our paper emphasises the agency of a local social movement and the strategies it employed to counter negative media frames. It does so through a systematic analysis of 250 Leidsch Dagblad news reports and Eurodusnie’s varied responses to them, highlighting the collective’s knack for ‘exploiting’ the mass media’s own logic in order to counter negative frames and further their own.