‘Together We Are Many’: Activist Networks and Regional Protest in Ukraine 1990-2004

This chapter looks at the evolution of different waves of anti-vax protests. In order to assess both the variety and the radicality of the protests, data from protest event analysis and video data analysis on the Italian case will be used to look first at the time and spatial evolution of the protests, then at the actors present in them and finally the forms of action employed. In particular, the chapter shows the diversity between two waves of protests, which were in fact separated by a low ebb. Following this, it compares the Italian case with the German and the Greek cases, looking at the former as an example of sustained protest and at the latter as one instead of very limited anti-vax contention. It concludes with some general observations on the interaction of waves within cycles, as an important theoretical contribution from the protest event analysis.

The investigation of long-term trends in contentious politics relies heavily on protest event analysis based on newspaper reports. This tends to be problematic in restricted media environments. To mitigate the effects of bias and (self-)censorship, researchers of protest in authoritarian regimes have experimented with other sources such as international media and dissident websites. However, even though classical news media are easier targets for repression, journalistic reports might still outperform other sources regarding the quality of information provided. Although these advantages and disadvantages are known in the literature, different types of sources have seldom been tested against each other in an authoritarian context. Using the example of Russia between 2007 and 2012, the present article systematically compares protest event data from English-language news agencies, dissident websites, and several local sources, first and foremost with a view to improving methodological knowledge. The analysis addresses broad trends across time and space as well as the coverage of specific regions and single protest events. It finds that although the data sources paint different pictures of protest in Russia, this divergence is systematic and can be put to productive use. The article closes with a discussion on how its findings can be applied in other contexts.

Moments of mass mobilization, such as those experienced in Argentina (2001) and Ukraine (2004), do not occur in a vacuum. And thus, we return to the first question of this study: Are the patterns of mobilization actually different in democratizing states with differing authoritarian legacies such as those in EE and LA; Can we identify similar patterns and types of social mobilization in different regions, despite variation in historical legacies? A thorough process tracing of the connections between different SMOs and protest events over time can help us identify similarities of the types and trajectories of mobilization. The following two chapters will do just this, by mapping the history of moments and movements in each country throughout the last century (1920–2004), against the backdrop of regional patterns. This mapping will demonstrate that mobilization has followed similar patterns in both regions, and in both countries. At the same time, employing political process theory, the mapping will help identify how contextual political opportunity structures and mobilization resources have over time affected the way activist networks were formed, what repertoires they employed and how they framed their activities and claims.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) experienced an unprecedented wave of non-sectarian anti-government protests in 2014. Although the key motivating factors generally highlighted such as economic marginalization and poor governance were common throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, the protests did not extend to all parts of the country. Notably, despite very similar initial conditions in the two jurisdictions of the country, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) saw major unrest with a large number of participants in many locations while subsequent protest mobilization was much more limited in the Republic of Srpska (RS). We take advantage of the variation in the responses from the two governments in the same country to evaluate how observed and anticipated government responses can shape the willingness to join dissident activity. We argue that variation in government responses and its impact on perceptions on prospects for successful collective action can help account for the differences in mobilization across the two entities. We test our expectations using a new data set on protest events, participants and government responses in BiH from January to April 2014. Our findings are consistent with the argument that coherent repressive government policies tend to suppress mobilization, while mixes of repressive responses and concessions from the government can encourage further mobilization. The results for FBiH show clear variation in protest following changes in government behavior, and are consistent the claim that repressive responses likely suppressed mobilization in the RS.

Starting from a critique of protest event and political discourse analysis, we propose an extended methodological approach that has the quantitative rigor of event analysis but also retrieves the qualitative discursive elements of claims. Our political claims approach extends the sample of contentious actions beyond protest event analysis by coding institutional and civil society actors, and conventional and discursive action forms, in addition to protests by movement actors, This redefines the research object to acts of political claims making in a multi-organizational field. We use examples from a research project on mobilization about migration and ethnic relations in Britain and Germany to demonstrate the analytic gains that are possible with our approach. By situating protest and social movements, not just theoretically but also methodologically, in a wider context of political claims making, we are in a better position to follow the recent calls for more integrated approaches, which place protest within multi-organizational fields, link it to political opportunities and outcomes, and are sensitive to discursive messages.

Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media and International Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 254 pp. Richard J. F. Day, Gramsci Is Dead: Anarchist Currents in Newest Social Movements (London: Pluto, 2005), 262 pp. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 427 pp. Lisa Jordan and Peter van Tuijl, eds., NGO Accountability: Politics, Principles and Innovations (London: Earthscan, 2006), 288 pp. Over past quarter-century, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activist networks have increasingly gone global. Between 1973 and 1993, transnational social movement organizations concerned with human rights, environment, peace, and development more than tripled in number, rising to over 600 organizations. (1) Formerly local and national NGOs and community organizations now regularly operate transnationally: swapping information, networking, coordinating campaigns, framing claims, and locating shared targets. This is a change not only in frequency of interactions across borders, but also in networks' density, adaptability, complexity, and reach. Sidney Tarrow and Donatella Della Porta have called this trend the most dramatic change we see in world of contentious politics. (2) Transnational social movements are dynamic networks of multiple organizations and issues, forged in parallel and autonomous international summits, protest events, and via Internet. (3) They have even created their own space, World Social Forum (WSF), as well as a web of regional, national, local, and thematic forums modeled on WSF's horizontal, open space format. Here, movements deepen and broaden their solidarity ties and joint analyses under strategically ambiguous slogan that Another World Is Possible. While diverse, networks are united in conviction that this alternative should be forms of governance than neoliberal globalization. Activists decry this current global (dis)order as being characterized by mounting poverty and inequality within and among societies, corporate encroachment of the commons, environmental devastation, feminization of poverty, exacerbation of conflicts, and erosion of democracy. They identify and denounce World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO) as main institutional promoters of neoliberalism. Beyond this shared oppositional orientation, these actors have diverse--and often conflicting--demands, organizational cultures, tactics, and ultimate goals. At most recent WSF in Nairobi, Immanuel Wallerstein spoke of a family of movements, replete with all affinities, identifications, and squabbles that constitute such relationships. Broadly, movements divide between reformist NGOs and more radical direct action social movements and networks. At bottom, feuds between these two tendencies stem from fundamentally different conceptions of existing global governance and order (as well as their place within it) and from degree and methods of change that each pursues. Contemporary activist forums like WSF have brought these different circles into contact with one another and thus have helped to attenuate polemic between them. Yet tensions remain, and there is evidence that other superpower is both demobilizing and fracturing along traditional leftist fault lines. But who are these new global actors? What are their points of convergence, contradiction, and outright conflict? And how do they engage with, legitimize, or challenge both state and international governance regimes that states have constructed? Finally, what can we learn about nature of global governance from movements' relatively marginal vantage points? These questions orient this essay. Each of four books examined here offers a unique standpoint and insight into this upstart clan of nonstate (and sometimes antistate) actors that challenge patrician families comprising global governance: those of states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and transnational corporations (TNCs). …

Introduction Fashion has long been associated with resistance movements across Asia and Australia, from the hand-spun cotton Khadi of Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom struggle to the traditional ankle length robe worn by Tibetans in the ‘White Wednesday Movement’ (Singh et al.; Yangzom). There are many reasons why fashion and activism have been interlinked. Fashion can serve as a form of nonverbal communication (Crane), which can convey activists’ grievances and concerns while symbolising solidarity (Doerr). It can provide an avenue to enact individual agency against repressive, authoritarian regimes (Yangzom; Doerr et al.). Fashion can codify a degree of uniformity within groups and thereby signal social identity (Craik), while also providing a means of building community (Barry and Drak). Fashion, therefore, offers activists the opportunity to develop the three characteristics which unite a social or environmental movement: a shared concern about an issue, a sense of social identity, and connections between individuals and groups. But while these fashion functions map onto movement characteristics, it remains unclear whether activists across the world deliberately include fashion into their protest action repertoires. This uncertainty exists partly because of a research and media focus on large scale, mass protests (Lester and Hutchins), where fashion characteristics are immediately visible and amenable to retrospective interpretation. This focus helps explain the rich volume of research examining the manifestation of fashion in past protests, such as the black, red, and yellow colours worn during the 1988 Aboriginal Long March of Freedom, Justice, and Hope (Maynard Dress; Coghlan), and the pink anti-Trump ‘pussyhats’ (Thompson). However, the protest events used to identify these fashion characteristics are a relatively small proportion of actions used by environmental activists (Dalton et al.; Gulliver et al.), which include not only rallies and marches, but also information evenings, letter writing sessions, and eco-activities such as tree plantings. This article aims to respond to Barnard’s (Looking) call for more empirical work on what contemporary cultural groups visually do with what they wear (see also Gerbaudo and Treré) via a content analysis of 36,676 events promoted on Facebook by 728 Australian environmental groups between 2010 and 2019. The article firstly reports findings from an analysis of this dataset to identify how fashion manifests in environmental activism, building on research demonstrating the role of protest-related nonverbal communications, such as protest signage (Bloomfield and Doolin), images (Kim), and icons, slogans, and logos (Goodnow). The article then considers what activists may seek to achieve through incorporating fashion into their action repertoire, and whether this suggests solidarity with activists seeking to effect environmental change across the wider Asian region. Fashion Activism Fashion is created through a particular assemblage of clothes, accessories, and hairstyles (Barry and Drak), which in turn forms a prevailing custom or style of dress (Craik). It is a cultural practice, providing ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) for an individual to express their social roles (Craik) and political identity (Behnke). Some scholars argue that fashion became overtly political during the 1960s and 70s, as social movements politicised appearance (Edwards). This has only increased in relevance with the rise of far right, populist, and authoritarian regimes, whose sub-cultures enact politicised identities through their distinct fashion characteristics (Gaugele and Titton; Gaugele). Fashion can therefore play an important role in protest movements, as “political subjectivities, political authority, political power and discipline are rendered visible, and thereby real, by the way fashion co-establishes them” (Behnke 3). Across the literature scholars have identified two primary avenues by which fashion and activism are connected. The first of these relates to activism targeting the fashion industry. This type of activism is found in both Asia and Australia, and promotes sustainable consumption choices such as buying used goods and transforming existing items (Chung and Yim), as well as highlighting garment worker exploitation within the fashion industry (Khan and Richards). The second avenue is called ‘fashion activism’: the use of fashion to intentionally signal a message seeking to evoke social and/or political change (Thompson). In this conceptualisation, clothing is used to signify a particular message (Crane). An example of this type of fashion activism is the ‘SlutWalk’, a protest where participants deliberately wore outfits described as slutty or revealing as a response to victim-blaming of women who had experienced sexual assault (Thompson). A key element of fashion activism thus appears to be its message intentionality. Clothes are specifically utilised to convey a message, such as a grievance about victim-blaming, which can then be incorporated into design features displayed on t-shirts, pins, and signs both on the runway and in protest events (Titton). However, while this ‘sender/receiver’ model of fashion communication (Barnard, Fashion as) can be compelling for activists, it is complex in practice. A message receiver can never have full knowledge of what message the sender seeks to signify through a particular clothing item, nor can the message sender predict how a receiver will interpret that message. Particular arrangements of clothing only hold communicative power when they are easily interpreted and related to the movement and its message, usually only intelligible to a specific culture or subculture (Goodnow). Even within that subculture it remains problematic to infer a message from a particular style of dress, as demonstrated in examples where dress is used to imply sexual consent; for example, in rape and assault cases (Lennon et al.). Given the challenges of interpreting fashion, do activists appear to use the ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) afforded by it as a protest tool? To investigate this question a pre-existing dataset of 36,676 events was analysed to ascertain if, and how, environmental activism engages with fashion (a detailed methodology is available on the OSF). Across this dataset, event categories, titles, and descriptions were reviewed to collate events connecting environmental activism to fashion. Three categories of events were found and are discussed in the next section: street theatre, sustainable fashion practices, and disruptive protest. Street Theatre Street theatre is a form of entertainment which uses public performance to raise awareness of injustices and build support for collective action (Houston and Pulido). It uses costumes as a vehicle for conveying messages about political issues and for making demands visible, and has been utilised by protesters across Australia and Asia (Roces). Many examples of street theatre were found in the dataset. For example, Extinction Rebellion (XR) consistently promoted street theatre events via sub-groups such as the ‘Red Rebels’ – a dedicated team of volunteers specialising in costumed street theatre – as well as by inviting supporters to participate in open street theatre events, such as in the ‘Halloween Dead Things Disco’. Dressed as spooky skeletons (doot, doot) and ghosts, we'll slide and shimmy down Sydney's streets in a supernatural style, as we bring attention to all the species claimed by the Sixth Mass Extinction. These street theatre events appeared to prioritise spectacle rather than disruption as a means to attract attention to their message. The Cairns and Far North Environment Centre ‘Climate Action Float’, for example, requested that attendees: Wear blue and gold or dress as your favourite reef animal, solar panel, maybe even the sun itself!? Reef & Solar // Blue & Gold is the guiding theme but we want your creativity take it from there. Most groups used street theatre as one of a range of different actions organised across a period of time. However, Climacts, a performance collective which uses ‘spectacle and satire to communicate the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crisis’ (Climacts), utilised this tactic exclusively. Their Climate Guardians collective used distinctive angel costumes to perform at the Climate Conference of Parties 26, and in various places around Australia (see images on their Website). Fig. 1: Costumed protest against Downer EDI's proposed work on the Adani coalmine; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). Sustainable Fashion Practices The second most common type of event which connected fashion with activism were those promoting sustainable fashion practices. While much research has highlighted the role of activism in raising awareness of problems related to the fashion industry (e.g. Hirscher), groups in the dataset were primarily focussed on organising activities where supporters communally created their own fashion items. The most common of these was the ‘crafternoon’, with over 260 separate crafternoon events identified in the dataset. These events brought activists together to create protest-related kit such as banners, signs, and costumes from recycled or repurposed materials, as demonstrated by Hume Climate Action Now’s ‘Crafternoon for Climate’ event: Come along on Sunday arvo for a relaxed arvo making posters and banners for upcoming Hume Climate Action Now events… Bring: Paints, textas, cardboard, fabric – whatever you’ve got lying around. Don’t have anything? That’s cool, just bring yourself. Events highlighting fashion industry problems were less frequent and tended to prioritise sharing of information about the fashion industry rather than promoting protests. For example, Transition Town Vincent held a ‘Slowing Down Fast Fashion – Transition Town Vincent Movie Night’ while the Green Embassy promoted the ‘Eco Fashion Week’. This event, held in 2017, was described as Australia’s only eco-fashion week, and included runway shows, music, and public talks. Other events also focussed on public talks, such as a Conservation Council of ACT event called ‘Green Drinks Canberra October 2017: Summer Edwards on the fashion industry’ and a panel discussion organised by a group called SEE-Change entitled ‘The Sustainable Wardrobe’. Disruptive Protest and T-Shirts Few events in the dataset mentioned elements of fashion outside of street theatre or sustainable fashion practices, with only one organisation explicitly connecting fashion with activism in its event details. This group – Australian Youth Climate Coalition – organised an event called ‘Activism in Fashion: Tote Bags, T-shirts and Poster Painting!’, which asked: How can we consistently be involved in campaigning while life can be so busy? Can we still be loud and get a message across without saying a word? The iconic 21st century activist "t-shirt and tote-bag" combination is hard to miss these days! Unlike street theatre and sustainable fashion practices, fashion appeared to be a consideration for only a small number of disruptive protests promoted by environmental groups in Australia. XR Brisbane sought to organise a fashion parade during the 2019 Rebellion Week, while XR protesters in Melbourne stripped down to underwear for a march through Melbourne city arcades (see also Turbet). Few common fashion elements appeared consistently on individual activists participating in events, and these were limited to accessories, such as ‘Stop Adani’ earrings, or t-shirts sold for fundraising and promotional purposes. Indeed, t-shirts appeared to be the most promoted clothing item in the dataset, continuing a long tradition of their use in protests (e.g. Maynard, Blankets). Easy to create, suitable for displaying both text and imagery, t-shirts sharing anti-coal messages featured predominantly in the Stop Adani campaign, while yellow t-shirts were a common item in Knitting Nanna’s anti-coal seam gas mining protests. Fig. 2: Stop Adani earrings and t-shirts; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). The Role of Fashion in Environmental Activism As these findings demonstrate, fashion appears to be deliberately utilised in environmental activism primarily through street theatre and the promotion of sustainable fashion practices. While fewer examples of fashion in disruptive protest were found and no consistent fashion assemblage was identified, accessories and t-shirts were utilised by many groups. What may activists be seeking to achieve through incorporating fashion via street theatre and sustainable fashion practices? Some scholars have argued that incorporating fashion into protest allows activists to signal political dissent against authoritarian control. For example, Yanzoom noted that by utilising fashion as a means of communication, Tibetan activists were able to embody their political goals despite repression of speech and movement by political powerholders. However, a consistent fashion repertoire across protests in this Australian dataset was not found. The opportunities afforded by protected protest rights in Australia and absence of violent police repression of disruptive protests may be one explanation why distinctive dress such as the masks and black attire of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters did not manifest in the dataset. Other scholars have observed that fashion sub-cultures also developed partly to express anti-establishment politics, such as the punk movement in the 1970s. Radical clothing accessorised by symbols, bright hair colours, body piercings, and heavy-duty books signalled opposition to the dominant political ideology (Craik). However, none of these purposes appeared to play a role in Australian environmental activism either. Instead, it appears that Maynard’s contention that Australian protest fashion barely deviates from everyday dress remains true today. Fashion within the events promoted in this large empirical dataset retained the ‘prevalence of everyday clothing’ (Maynard, Dress 111). The lack of a clearly discernible single protest fashion style within the dataset may be related to the shortcomings of the sender/receiver model of fashion communication. As Barnard (Fashion Statements) argued, fashion is not always used as a vehicle for conveying messages, but also as a platform for constructing and reproducing identity. Indeed, a multiplicity of researchers have noted how fashion acts as a signal of what social groups individuals belong to (see Roach-Higgins and Eicher). Activist groups have a variety of goals, which not only include promoting environmental change but also mobilising more people to join their cause (Gulliver et al., Understanding). Stereotyping can hinder achievement of these goals. It has been demonstrated, for example, that individuals who hold negative stereotypes of ‘typical’ activists are less likely to want to associate with them, and less likely to adopt their behaviours (Bashir et al.). Accordingly, some activist groups have been shown to actively promote dress associated with other identity groups, specifically to challenge cultural constructions of environmental activist stereotypes (see also Roces). For example, Bloomfield and Doolins’s study of the NZ anti-GE group MAdGE (Mothers against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment) demonstrated how visual protest artifacts conveyed the protesters’ social identity as mothers and customers rather than environmental activists, claiming an alternative cultural mandate for challenging the authority of science (see also Einwohner et al.). The data suggest that Australian activists are seeking to avoid this stereotype as well. The absence of a consistent fashion promoted within the dataset may reflect awareness of problematic stereotypes that activists may be then deliberately seeking to avoid. Maynard (Dress), for example, has noted how the everyday dress of Australian protesters serves to deflect stereotypical labelling of participants. This strategy is also mirrored by the changing nature of groups within the Australian environmental movement. The event database demonstrates that an increasing number of environmental groups are emerging with names highlighting non-stereotypical environmental identities: groups such as ‘Engineers Declare’ and ‘Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action’. Beyond these identity processes, the frequent use of costumed street theatre protest suggests that activists recognise the value of using fashion as a vehicle for communicating messages, despite the challenges of interpretation described above. Much of the language used to promote street theatre in the Facebook event listings suggests that these costumes were deliberately designed to signify a particular meaning, with individuals encouraged to dress up to be ‘a vehicle for myth and symbol’ (Lavender 11). It may be that costumes are also utilised in protest due to their suitability as an image event, convenient for dissemination by mass media seeking colourful and engaging imagery (Delicath and Deluca; Doerr). Furthermore, costumes, as with text or colours presented on t-shirts, may offer activists an avenue to clearly convey a visual message which is more resistant to stereotyping. This is especially relevant given that fashion can be re-interpreted and misinterpreted by audiences, as well as reframed and reinterpreted by the media (Maynard, Dress). While the prevalence of costumed performance and infrequent mentions of fashion in the dataset may be explained by stereotype avoidance and messaging clarity, sustainable fashion practices were more straightforward in intent. Groups used multiple approaches to educate audiences about sustainable fashion, whether through fostering sustainable fashion practices or raising awareness of fashion industry problems. In this regard, fashion in protest in Australia closely resembles Asian sustainable fashion activism (see e.g. Chon et al. regarding the Singaporean context). In particular, the large number of ‘crafternoons’ suggests their importance as sites of activism and community building. Craftivism – acts such as quilting banners, yarn bombing, and cross stitching feminist slogans – are used by many groups to draw attention to social, political and environmental issues (McGovern and Barnes). This type of ‘creative activism’ (Filippello) has been used to challenge aesthetic and political norms across a variety of contested socio-political landscapes. These activities not only develop activism skills, but also foster community (Barry and Drak). For environmental groups, these community building events can play a critical role in sustaining and supporting ongoing environmental activism (Gulliver et al., Understanding) as well as demonstrating solidarity with workers across Asia experiencing labour injustices linked to the fashion industry (Chung and Yim). Conclusion Studies examining protest fashion demonstrate that clothing provides a canvas for sharing protest messages and identities in both Asia and Australia (Benda; Yangzom; Craik). However, despite the fashion’s utility as communication tool for social and environmental movements, empirical studies of how fashion is used by activists in these contexts remain rare. This analysis demonstrates that Australian environmental activists use fashion in their action repertoire primarily through costumed street theatre performances and promoting sustainable fashion practices. By doing so they may be seeking to use fashion as a means of conveying messages, while avoiding stereotypes that can demobilise supporters and reduce support for their cause. Furthermore, sustainable fashion activism offers opportunities for activists to achieve multiple goals: to subvert the fast fashion industry, to provide participation avenues for new activists, to help build activist communities, and to express solidarity with those experiencing fast fashion-related labour injustices. These findings suggest that the use of fashion in protest actions can move beyond identity messaging to also enact sustainable practices while co-opting and resisting hegemonic ideas of consumerism. By integrating fashion into the vibrant and diverse actions promoted by environmental movements across Australia and Asia, activists can construct and perform identities while fostering the community bonds and networks from which movements demanding environmental change derive their strength. Ethics Approval Statement This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Queensland (2018000963). Data Availability A detailed methodology explaining how the dataset was constructed and analysed is available on the Open Science Framework: <https://osf.io/sq5dz/?view_only=9bc0d3945caa443084361f10b6720589>.

Drawing on the case of O Movimento Brasil Livre (The Free Brazil Movement), or MBL, this article interrogates key assumptions about the nature of networked digital activism. The MBL, formed in the early 2010s by a Koch-funded network of libertarian student groups, utilized a combination of activist training and strategic media engagement to organize a series of mass mobilizations in 2015 against supposed corruption within the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) administration under President Dilma Rousseff. Organized through MBL Facebook pages and promoted via YouTube and television appearances by movement leaders, these protests brought millions of Brazilian citizens to the streets in a wave of protests that eventually sparked Dilma's impeachment in May 2016. Deploying the conceptual framework of right-wing Leninism, this article argues that conservative groups like the MBL are able to construct digital protest movements with revolutionary political ramifications due to their embrace of strategies originally formulated by Lenin, including the training of groups of ideologically coherent and committed cadres and the pursuit of dual power formation where the current political order is ruptured from the inside. Understanding how right-wing activists mobilize digital media is of paramount importance for both countering their influence and developing strategies for the Left.

When social movement scholars write about protest, they typically reference protest events occurring in public spaces. These events encompass various types of protest activities such as marches, rallies, demonstrations, pickets, strikes, and vigils, which may occur as stand‐alone activities or in various combinations thereof, such as marching to the site of a rally or demonstration. Inasmuch as such events are often sponsored and organized by an anchoring social movement or coalition of movements, there is little question but that the analysis of protest events is fundamental to understanding aspects of the dynamics and operation of social movements. Yet, it is argued in this entry that the tendency to treat protest and protest events as parallel terms for the same phenomena constricts our understanding of protest in a number of ways. First, most protest events function as the public face of an existing movement or as the upsurge of an underlying animating sentiment pool. Much like the metaphoric tip of an iceberg, protest events generally signify a broader and deeper base of organizational and/or corresponding cognitive and affective support or sentimentality, which are too often overlooked. Second, a research focus on protest events also implies that protest which doesn't congeal into public, collective, embodied protest events rarely merits analytic attention. Thus, by yoking protest to protest events, as if they are the same, the broader character and multidimensionality of protest is glossed over and misconstrued.

Protest event analysis is a key method to study social movements, allowing to systematically analyze protest events over time and space. However, the manual coding of protest events is time-consuming and resource intensive. Recently, advances in automated approaches offer opportunities to code multiple sources and create large data sets that span many countries and years. However, too often the procedures used are not discussed in details and, therefore, researchers have a limited capacity to assess the validity and reliability of the data. In addition, many researchers highlighted biases associated with the study of protest events that are reported in the news. In this study, we ask how social scientists can build on electronic news databases and computational tools to create reliable PEA data that cover a large number of countries over a long period of time. We provide a detailed description our semiautomated approach and we offer an extensive discussion of potential biases associated with the study of protest events identified in international news sources.

This article analyses the most prominent mobilizations led by civil society organizations, activist networks, and parties in Spain from 1996 to 2020. The article examines 235 large-scale mobilizations to explore how civil society actors have shaped and reflected persistent sociopolitical cleavages. Using protest event analysis and a CHAID-based classification model, it identifies terrorism and nationalism as key recurring issues. These mobilizations reveal long-term tensions rooted in Spain’s democratic transition, with victims’ associations, the 15M/Indignados movement, and Catalan secessionism illustrating the evolution of civic culture and civil institutions. Since the end of ETA terrorism in 2011, nationalist claims have sustained a polarised public sphere, exposing the enduring cleavage around Spain’s constitutional national identity.

To examine whether and how social movements that target private firms are influenced by larger protest cycles, we theorize about osmotic mobilization—social movement spillover that crosses the boundary of the firm—and how it should vary with the ideological overlap of the relevant actors and the opportunity structure that potential activists face inside the firm. We test our hypotheses by examining the relationship between levels of protest in U.S. cities around issues like Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and the women’s movement and subsequent support for labor-union organizing in those cities. Combining nationally representative data on more than 20,000 protest events from 1960 to 1995 with data on more than 150,000 union organizing drives held from 1965 to 1999, we find that greater levels of protest activity are associated with greater union support, that spillover accrued disproportionately to unions with more progressive track records on issues like Civil Rights, and that these effects were disproportionately large in the wake of mobilization around employment-related causes and shrank in the wake of conservative political reaction that limited room for maneuver among the external protesters, the labor movement, or both. Our research helps to specify the channels through which external pressures affect firm outcomes.

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.

The Eurozone crisis triggered deep political dissent in Southern Europe. As the crisis unfolded, citizens took massively to the streets in attempts to prevent austerity policies but also to call for more democracy. We analyze protest waves in four Southern European countries: Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. We argue that protest events are reactions to austerity measures when austerity is the only game in town. Hence, we test the effects of elections, the presence of new challengers, and austerity votes on protest. We use a data set of protest events based on the coding of newswires covering protest in its different forms from 2000 to 2015. We show that protest waves took place in the four countries and that they reveal widespread dissatisfaction with austerity policies. Our article contributes to the understanding of the links between protest and institutional politics during the Eurozone crisis.

Drawing on a network of transnational activists, this paper argues that a new type of regional network internationalism has emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa. Initiated by the Global Labour University (GLU), through a short two-month residential course called Engage, it has been able over the last seven years to develop the skills for a new type of union organiser, one who understands the global context, but is rooted in their local community. This network works at forging links of solidarity across national borders and regional frontiers. Their solidarity work aims at sharing knowledge and experience between activists and worker organisations and the development of meetings and campaigns to strategize and put into action these new forms of transnational solidarity.