The wave of sit-ins that swept through the American South in the spring of 1960 transformed the struggle for racial equality. This episode is widely cited in the literature on social movements, but ...the debate over its explanation remains unresolved-partly because previous research has relied on case studies of a few large cities. The authors use event-history analysis to trace the diffusion of sit-ins throughout the South and to compare cities where sit-ins occurred with the majority of cities where they did not. They assess the relative importance of three channels of diffusion: movement organizations, social networks, and news media. The authors find that movement organizations played an important role in orchestrating protest; what mattered was a cadre of activists rather than mass membership. There is little evidence that social networks acted as a channel for diffusion among cities. By contrast, news media were crucial for conveying information about protests elsewhere. In addition, the authors demonstrate that sit-ins were most likely to occur where there were many college students, where adults in the black community had greater resources and autonomy, and where political opportunities were more favorable.
Do new communication technologies, such as social media, alleviate the collective action problem? This paper provides evidence that penetration of VK, the dominant Russian online social network, led ...to more protest activity during a wave of protests in Russia in 2011. As a source of exogenous variation in network penetration, we use the information on the city of origin of the students who studied with the founder of VK, controlling for the city of origin of the students who studied at the same university several years earlier or later. We find that a 10% increase in VK penetration increased the probability of a protest by 4.6% and the number of protesters by 19%. Additional results suggest that social media induced protest activity by reducing the costs of coordination rather than by spreading information critical of the government. We observe that VK penetration increased pro-governmental support, with no evidence of increased polarization. We also find that cities with higher fractionalization of network users between VK and Facebook experienced fewer protests, and the effect of VK on protests exhibits threshold behavior.
Do police treat religious-based protest events differently than secular ones? Drawing on data from more than 15,000 protest events in the United States (1960 to 1995) and using quantitative methods, ...we find that law enforcement agents were less likely to show up at protests when general religious actors, actions, or organizations were present. Rather than reflecting privileged legitimacy, we find that this protective effect is explained by religious protesters' use of less threatening tactics at events. When religion is disaggregated into different traditions, only mainline and black Protestant groups have lower rates of policing than secular groups. As with the general religion finding, the buffering effect these traditions have on policing is mediated by protester tactics. Moreover, we find that fundamentalist Christians are more likely to be policed than are secular activists when threatening tactics are included. Finally, when actors associated with non-Christian religions engage in extremely confrontational tactics, they are more likely to provoke a police response than are similarly behaving secular groups.
LIBERATION TECHNOLOGY Manacorda, Marco; Tesei, Andrea
Econometrica,
March 2020, Volume:
88, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Can digital information and communication technology foster mass political mobilization? We use a novel georeferenced data set for the entire African continent between 1998 and 2012 on the coverage ...of mobile phone signal together with georeferenced data from multiple sources on the occurrence of protests and on individual participation in protests to bring this argument to empirical scrutiny. We find that while mobile phones are instrumental to mass mobilization, this only happens during economic downturns, when reasons for grievance emerge and the cost of participation falls. The results are in line with insights from a network model with imperfect information and strategic complementarities in protest occurrence. Mobile phones make individuals more responsive to both changes in economic conditions—a mechanism that we ascribe to enhanced information—and to their neighbors’ participation—a mechanism that we ascribe to enhanced coordination.
The study aims to extend the existing knowledge about the dynamics of first-time participation in protest events. To tackle that puzzle we rely on extensive and innovative protest survey evidence ...covering 18 separate demonstrations in eight countries across nine different issues. On the individual level, age, motivation, and non-organizational mobilization appear to be consistent and robust predictors of first-timership. On the aggregate level, demonstrations staged just after or during a protest wave, large demonstrations, and demonstrations of old or new emotional movements are attended by a relatively larger share of first-timers. We conclude that it is thus the interplay of individual-and aggregate-level determinants that produces first-time participation.
How do radical movements seeking fundamental social change engage with nearer-term policy dilemmas? Disciplinary boundaries and practical obstacles have limited research into protester policy ...engagement. Using a hybrid method combining participant-observation and expert-led focus groups, we document activist attitudes concerning controversial climate policy options. Data gathered at ‘Climate Camps’ in six national contexts are presented alongside evidence from similar ‘participant-instigator’ events at Green Party conferences. We find activists engaged in direct action outside the established political system had policy knowledge and agendas comparable to or surpassing those active within the system. Support for radical change appears correlated with – rather than opposed to – knowledge and interest in policy agendas. As climate protests escalate it is important to understand ‘protester policy engagement’ – the processing, production and communication of changes proposed from a position outside the established political system and to theorise this with, rather than in contradistinction to, social movement identity.
Based on the theoretical concepts of social networks and technology affordances, this article argues that different social media platforms influence political participation through unique, yet ...complementary, routes. More specifically, it proposes that Facebook and Twitter are conducive to protest behavior through two distinct mechanisms: whereas the influence of Facebook use is more effective through communication with strong-tie networks, the impact of Twitter use is more effective through communication with weak-tie networks. To test these expectations, we analyze data from a cross-sectional, face-to-face survey on a representative sample of Chilean youths conducted in 2014. Findings in the study lend empirical support for these hypotheses. Consequently, while different social media (in this case, Facebook and Twitter) are similar in their participatory effects, the paths through which this influence occurs are distinct, a finding that highlights the importance of studying political behavior across different media platforms.
Protest survey is a standard tool for scholars to understand protests. However, although protest survey methods are well established, the occurrence of spontaneous and leaderless protests has created ...new challenges for researchers. Not only do their unpredictable occurrences hinder planning, their fluidity also creates problems in obtaining representative samples. This article addresses these challenges based on our research during Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. We propose a mixed-mode sampling method combining face-to-face survey and smartphone-based online survey (onsite and post hoc), which can maximize sample sizes while ensuring representativeness in a cost-effective manner. Test results indicate that key variables from the survey modes are not statistically different in a consistent manner, except for age. Our findings show mixed-mode sampling can better capture protesters’ characteristics in contemporary protests and is replicable in other contexts.
Internet shutdowns authorized by the state are becoming a recurring case in countries under military or authoritarian rule, such as Sudan. This article examines how the military in Sudan shut down ...the Internet to cover up the June 3 massacre. The shutdown made it difficult for the protestors and civilians to share and document the human rights violations committed by the state from June 3 to July 9, 2019. We also demonstrate how the Internet shutdowns were instrumental in circulating state-sponsored disinformation campaigns delegitimizing the protests. The article expands on existing literature to explain how information vacuums are conducive to the spread of disinformation and the weakening of on-ground protest movements. Despite the crippling effects of the Internet shutdown in Khartoum, our analysis illustrates how protestors challenged designed technical and physical workarounds to circumvent the shutdown.
This article systematically investigates the relationship between internet use and protests in authoritarian states and democracies. It argues that unlike in democracies, internet use has facilitated ...the occurrence of protests in authoritarian regimes, developing a theoretical rationale for this claim and substantiating it with robust empirical evidence. The article argues that whereas information could already flow relatively freely in democracies, the use of the internet has increased access to information in authoritarian regimes despite authoritarian attempts to control cyberspace. The article suggests this increased access to information positively affects protesting in authoritarian states via four complementary causal pathways: (1) by reducing the communication costs for oppositional movements; (2) by instigating attitudinal change; (3) decreasing the informational uncertainty for potential protesters; and (4) through the mobilizing effect of the spread of dramatic videos and images. These causal pathways are illustrated using anecdotal evidence from the Tunisian revolution (2010-2011). The general claim that internet use has facilitated the occurrence of protests under authoritarian rule is systematically tested in a global quantitative study using country-year data from 1990 to 2013. Internet use increases the expected number of protests in authoritarian states as hypothesized. This effect remains robust across a number of model specifications.
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