The study’s critical error is using media reports as a direct proxy for the genuine arguments of police, government, and activists, thereby conflating the media’s filtered representation of the debate with the social reality of the debate itself. This methodological choice fundamentally compromises the Bourdieusian analysis, as the findings reflect the journalistic field’s incentives for dramatic quotes rather than the actual habitus and symbolic struggles of the groups in question. To clarify, how can the authors claim to analyze the competing habitus of these fields when their data is exclusively from a third field (media) that actively shapes and distorts the very discourse they are studying?
