Protest Event Analysis and Its Offspring

Abstract

Protest event analysis (PEA) has become a key method of social movement research over the past decades. Oliver et al. (2003) list the increasing use of PEA even among the top-four emerging trends in social movement research. The authors describe these trends as “transcending old categories and boundaries” and combining “methodological and theoretical advances” (Oliver et al. 2003, 214). The method gained ground in the 1980s and early 1990s, as Crist and McCarthy’s (1996) review article on the methodological repertoires in social movement research highlights. In contrast to most other methods presented in this volume, PEA is a key methodological innovation that emerged within the social movement field itself, and has more recently been adapted and refined to study other research topics.