How can we measure protests and their impact? How has social media changed the nature and frequency of protests? Where is more research needed?
Read ‘Protests’, in the Annual Review of Economics by Davide Cantoni, Andrew Kao, David Yang and Noam Yuchtman.
In this week’s episode of VoxDevTalks, Tim Phillips speaks to David Yang and Noam Yuchtman about how we can measure protests and their impacts, what drives protests and their broader importance.
Why are protest important to study?
Protests arise when individuals face grievances that compel them to act. This often reflects feelings of disempowerment and being unheard, even in democratic contexts where voting is an option but people lack confidence in the political system. Protests impose a personal cost on those who participate in them, highlighting their sense of dissatisfaction and underscoring the significance of such actions.
How can we define a protest?
In their review article on protests, David Yang and Noam Yuchtman provide a broad definition of protests to leverage existing data sources and research, as well as to utilise the coding developed by others.
‘[Protests are] political actions by groups of people outside of the formal political system that express a particular demand…these can range in size and in objective, but they share a common element of collective action.’
While it is relatively straightforward to define the concept of a protest, empirically measuring protests is far more challenging. Not every gathering or street activity advocating for policy change qualifies as a protest. To be measurable, protests must be captured by either social or traditional media.
How can we measure the occurrence of protests?
There is a wide array of data sources available for studying protests. In their review article, the authors utilise big data and machine learning techniques to code various media articles. A key resource they use is GDELT, a global event database that employs an automated machine learning process to capture a wide range of events worldwide, including protests.
Other data projects, including those with country-specific coverage, also aim to measure protests and can be compared to GDELT to assess their scope. While GDELT offers more comprehensive coverage, it may trade off some accuracy, where country-specific databases might perform more reliably.
How can we measure whether protests are successful?
‘I think trying to code the outcome of a protest as successful or not, at the very least, requires some perspective of time and the passage of time.’
Protests are often part of longer-term movements, making it challenging to assess the impact of a single protest. Additionally, their influence may not be immediate; instead, protests can gradually and subtly shape the political environment over time. A more effective measure of a protest's success might be whether it occurs at all and the scale it is able to achieve.
In some instances, protests can have unintended consequences, such as increased enforcement or a general deterioration of conditions. Incorporating this into measures of success is complex and highlights the difficulty of linking protests to specific outcomes or consequences.
History of protests
Protest activity has seen notable spikes in the past. For instance, during the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a significant rise in protests, particularly in autocracies and fragile democracies. A similar surge occurred during the Arab Spring, after which the level of protests has remained elevated. Social media may have played a role in this recent trend by making protests easier to organise and facilitating coordination among participants.
What has been the role of social media?
‘Twitter and Tear Gas’ by Zeynep Tufekci examines the connection between social media and protests, finding that social media plays a crucial role, particularly in contexts where free communication and the flow of information are restricted. This is often the case in weak democracies and autocracies.
‘in a very well-developed democracy and a free society, we can coordinate to protest. We can communicate with each other, we can gather without fear, and that's something that allows for protest coordination and sort of movement consolidation. And social media provides that capacity, especially in these countries where it would otherwise be lacking.’
There is evidence suggesting that social media enables some protests that might not have occurred otherwise. By simplifying communication and making it harder for regimes to suppress coordination efforts, social media has likely influenced the nature of protests compared to the past. This shift allows for more frequent, lower-stakes protests, often smaller in scale. Consequently, this could affect the overall type and effectiveness of protests, potentially lowering the average impact of those observed. However, assessing these changes in empirical data remains a significant challenge.
What is the difference between a protest and a political movement?
Movements consist of a series of political expressions, which can include street protests, other forms of activism, and even formal organisations. In some cases, movements manifest as a sequence of protests, where the progression of these protests essentially defines the movement itself. Simultaneously, movements can also facilitate the emergence of protests, creating a bidirectional relationship between the two. For example, research from Hong Kong reveals that participation in one protest often motivates involvement in subsequent protests, highlighting the reinforcing dynamic between movements and protests.
Patterns of protests
Protests exhibit fascinating patterns when analysed in terms of their duration and evolution. Surprisingly, many protests persist for extended periods, even under autocratic regimes.
‘we find really long leads prior to the maximal diffusion, and in some cases, relatively gradual declines from the peak’
These patterns highlight the complex interactions between protesters, non-protesters, and the state, warranting further research. This dynamic is of interest both to states attempting to suppress protests and to protest organisers aiming to sustain momentum. Two distinct challenges emerge: how to engage and mobile a subgroup of the population to protest and how to maintain the participation of individuals in ongoing protests. A clear distinction exists between one-off protests and continuous, repeated activities, each presenting unique implications for both state actors and protest organisers.
State repression of protests
Research has explored whether authoritarian governments can learn from protests, as these events may provide insights into their citizens' grievances. Evidence suggests that autocrats often tolerate protests to a certain extent but increasingly use new technologies, such as facial recognition and surveillance cameras, to suppress protests before they can fully develop. The question of how states should respond, including whether to negotiate or crack down, has broader relevance, particularly when considering protests on university campuses and other societal contexts.
States have many different options in their toolkit. Research by Jaya Wen from China analyses how the Chinese government uses state-owned enterprises to promote social stability by employing high-risk groups when unrest threats emerge.
The importance of economic factors for protests
Economic grievances can mobilise people to protest as a result of inequality or specific policies or through strikes in response to working conditions. Examples include the Occupy movement and demonstrations against austerity measures.
‘although some economic approaches to protest would really prioritise economics and economic variables, we actually find that economic variables at the country level are not such strong predictors of protest prevalence.’
While economic grievances can be a significant underlying driver of discontent, additional factors are often necessary to transform this dissatisfaction into action. Economic downturns and grievances are common, yet not all lead to protests. This disparity is likely influenced by broader issues such as effective coordination and the convergence of the right group of individuals sharing the same grievances at the same time.
What type of people decide to protest?
Based on aggregate data used in their review, and more focused work in Hong Kong, they find that protestors seem to be ‘pro-social types’ - as measured through elicitation exercises regarding altruism, reciprocity or support for redistribution. This was found across years of surveys in Hong Kong and matches with the aggregate findings from the review. This contrasts with how protesters are often portrayed as anti-social by governments.
However, pro-social tendencies do not guarantee that all protests will remain peaceful and non-violent. The connection between pro-sociality and protesting is logical, as participating in protests typically involves significant personal costs in time, effort, and safety to advocate for change.
Protests around the world
Certain regions are overrepresented in academic research on protests, often due to the presence of significant academic expertise, robust infrastructure or strong state systems. As a result, there is extensive research on protests in places like the United States, China and Russia.
However, there is a pressing need for more research in politically fragile and dangerous regions, where state responses and protest dynamics are likely to differ significantly. Conducting research in such areas is challenging due to the inherent dangers and ethical complexities involved.
One notably underrepresented area, despite its prominence in media coverage, is the protests related to Israel and Palestine. Studying these protests could provide valuable insights into global politics, although there may be significant challenges to researching them.
Studying protests is critically important
Protests often emerge as expressions of political grievances, where individuals feel disempowered or unheard. As such feelings become more commonplace, more research into the drivers, characteristics and impacts of protests is urgently needed.
‘the instances where human race gather together on the streets and exhibit their power as a group of the population that demand changes from autocrats, from dictators or from some democratic regimes where the voice isn't heard through the electoral system, those are some of the most powerful moments.’