Abstract
BlackLivesMatter (BLM) protests achieved historically high rates of participation in 2020, resultant of social and economic distress. This study observes the effect of strain through both a collective action framework and statistical methodology. Withstanding the departure of new social movement theories from the traditional paradigm, we apply an economic lens to understand the underlying strain on the BLM population. The Google Trends API and Granger Causal testing demonstrate that the outlying 2020 increase in social movement participation is predicated on the COVID-19 pandemic. There were significant short-run economic effects, namely, the misallocation of resources and labor market disequilibrium on the Black community. Our analysis additionally demonstrates the discrepancies between variable search rate increases and changes in their real counterparts. With all other contributing factors held constant, we find significant causal relationships towards BLM search rates, implying a directional propagation of pandemic-related socioeconomic forces and the resulting social movement participation, signaling economic deprivation.
Highlights
Over the past ten years, there have been events of racial injustice, police brutality, and division among communities within the United States
The Google Trends API and Granger Causal testing demonstrate that the outlying 2020 increase in social movement participation is predicated on the COVID-19 pandemic
We developed a conceptual understanding of precisely how the strain from economic deprivation and COVID led to social movement participation
Summary
Over the past ten years, there have been events of racial injustice, police brutality, and division among communities within the United States. Oliver demic cumulatively lead to an exponential response in BLM interest and search participation. Under controlled assumptions in our model, value-added and collective action theory qualify these causal flows from exogenous economic and social forces towards exponentiated search participation (volume of browser interest searchesassumed to maintain a fixed proportion to real participation, an accurate measure of changes in participation). These frames of reference allow us to interpret the BLM social phenomena as a signaling mechanism of economic strain. Observing the economic distribution of scarce material ends is a lens to further piece together the complex social puzzle of equality, race, cohesion, and cultural identity amid crisis
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