Mass Protests Research Articles

Crowdsourcing Documentary Making

The creative commons documentary Preempting Dissent (2014) builds upon the book of the same name written by Greg Elmer and Andy Opel. The film is a culmination of a collaborative process of soliciting, collecting and editing video, still images, and creative commons music files from people around the world. Preempting Dissent interrogates the expansion of the so-called “Miami-Model” of protest policing, a set of strategies developed in the wake of 9/11 to preempt forms of mass protest at major events in the US and worldwide. The film tracks the development of the Miami model after the WTO protests in Seattle 1999, through the post-9/11 years, FTAA & G8/20 summits, and most recently the Occupy Wall St movements. The film exposes the political, social, and economic roots of preemptive forms of protest policing and their manifestations in spatial tactics, the deployment of so-called ‘less-lethal’ weapons, and surveillance regimes. The film notes however that new social movements have themselves begun to adopt preemptive tactics so as not to fall into the trap set for them by police agencies worldwide.

The “Vendee” of the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907? The Western Provinces and the Black Hundreds

The western French department of the Vendee has acquired a certain regional identity in the politics of historical memory not only of the French Revolution but also of the Russian Revolution of 1917-1922. The royalist rebellion of the Vendee peasants between 1793-1796 has become a synonym for a region of mass lower-class counter-revolution. Not surprisingly, both supporters and opponents of the Bolsheviks tried to find parallels with the French Revolution to explain the massiveness of anti-Bolshevik opposition in certain regions of the former Russian Empire. Often both Reds and Whites called the Cossack lands, especially the Don, the Vendee of the Russian Revolution. However, it is impossible to place an equal sign between the Vendee peasants, fighting for king and church, and anti-Bolshevik Cossacks and peasants because the Cossacks and peasants were not fighting for the restoration of the monarchy. One can find a Russian equivalent to the Vendee regional concept of mass counter-revolution in the nine western provinces of the Russian Empire in the Revolution of 1905-1907. These provinces, along with six other provinces, comprised the Jewish Pale of Settlement and became bastions of the Union of the Russian People and other Black Hundred organizations. Unlike the interior Russian regions, the western provinces were multiethnic and multireligious. The western provinces had mass protest movements and outbreaks of terrorism where ethnic, religious and social factors intersected. The amorphous populist Black Hundred ideology could attract mass support in the western provinces from all those seeing themselves as victims of all different variations of exploitation and injustices from the hands of different establishments.

“So Many Mothers, So Little Love”: Discourse of Motherly Love and Parental Governance in 2019 Hong Kong Protests

Abstract This paper focuses on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s discourse of motherly love during the 2019 mass protests, examining it in relation to the politicization of Confucianism taking place in China today. This politicization results from a new cult of personality centered on President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan which reinforces patriarchal authoritarianism and familial nationalism through an explicit emphasis on Confucianism and traditional values. Through this process, authoritarian power has been reconfigured and legitimized as Confucian duty, with the result that political leaders are made to appear firm but benevolent parents while the protestors are cast in the role of children requiring discipline. Lam’s discourse of motherly love is further complicated by the fact that she is the first woman to assume such a leadership role in modern Chinese history, which further illuminates Hong Kong’s struggle against both patriarchal authoritarianism and the gendered legacy of coloniality.

“Defection-Proofing” the Military and Authoritarian Regime Survival

The question of loyalty in autocratic regimes has drawn a sustained scholarly interest, especially as autocratic leaders need to secure the support of their militaries to survive in office and to minimize the risk of a coup. Among the commonly employed mechanisms in this regard is the extension of extra-budgetary financial rewards, including “Military-Owned Businesses (MOBs)”. Nevertheless, under the increasingly significant threat of an uprising from below, military defection remains the key for the success of the revolution. The question then becomes: under what conditions would a military defect from an autocratic ruling alliance? This paper presents one novel answer to this question, which is: militaries are “defection-proofed” in the face of mass uprisings when they develop financial dependency on the regime. This hypothesis is tested comparatively against the cases of mass protests in China (1989), Indonesia (1998), Thailand (2006), and Iran (2009).

Rethinking Transfers of Power and Public Protest in Kazakhstan, 1959–1989

This article attempts to reconstruct and reconnect the history of transfers of power and mass protests in Kazakhstan since 1959. The investigation focuses on two events, the uprising in Temirtau in 1959 and the so-called December events (referred to as ‘Zheltoqsan’) in Almaty and other cities in Kazakhstan in 1986. In doing so, this article does not intend to simply set the two episodes side by side to discuss their similarities and differences. Rather, it aims to explore the common dynamics that influenced and, to a certain extent, shaped Kazakhstan as a polity in the second half of the twentieth century.

The “Immortal Regiment”: A “Holiday Through Tears,” a Parade of the Dead, or a Mass Protest?

ABSTRACT The history of the Great Patriotic War has become post-Soviet Russia’s universal language for political discussion and the only effective “bond.” As the most advantageous narrative from the perspective of the regime’s interests, it is this narrative of war that the Kremlin seeks to control above all. Memory of the war has been “appropriated” by the state, and the more freedom it has to manipulate this, the less veterans are able to challenge its triumphal mythmaking. However, the memory of war is, for most Russians, not limited to any official narrative in school texts, books, or films. For each family, it is also a family history, an object of pride, and a memory of tragedy. The state’s appropriation of the war and the pressure of “military-patriotic propaganda” have sparked resistance among a significant portion of society, along with a desire to affirm their own family memories. The “Immortal Regiment” was originally an attempt to seize power from the state monopoly and to assert the history of the war as a family history, one not inscribed in the state narrative alone, but that also subordinates the state narrative to family memory. Millions of Russians took to the streets to assert their right to history, the most powerful political statement in Russia’s entire post-Soviet history. The state has tried to paint the Immortal Regiment as a loyalist movement, because it speaks to the same topic that constitutes the core of the regime’s own political ideology, the Great Patriotic War. Meanwhile, it is clear even to the regime itself that this movement is discussing the war differently, in fact undermining the state’s interpretive monopoly on the military past and, consequently, its right to make political statements that exploit the theme of the war. It nevertheless remains too early to say whether the state has fully integrated this action into the propaganda mainstream. Furthermore, the power of the Immortal Regiment is even forcing propaganda to adapt to the demands of family and personal memory.

Массовые протесты в Иране в 2017–2019 гг.: причины, ход событий и итоги

At the end of the 2010s, there have been two episodes of mass protests in Iran. The demonstrators put forward both economic and radical political slogans to overthrow the Islamic regime. An important cause of destabilization was the sharp deterioration in the economic situation of ordinary Iranians. The main protest force was the unemployed and unsettled urban youth. The government's response to the last protests has been much harsher. It is possible to predict high protest activity in the future, but serious political changes are very unlikely.

A Forgotten Bishop: Lutsk Bishop Ostafy (Eugene) Yelo-Malynsky in the Shadow of His Outstanding Contemporaries

The article deals with the activity of the Union Bishop Ostafy (Eugene) Yelo-Malynsky, who headed the Lutsk Episcopal Chair in 1607–1620. The questions of the origin of the Yelo-Malynsky family, their formation in the status of large landowners in Volhynia; the peculiarities of the secular period of the future bishop’s life are also analyzed. It is noted that Ostafy Yelo-Malynsky was, figuratively speaking, a member of the “club of Volhynian magnates”, owned numerous estates and distinguished himself as a successful businessman. At the same time, from a young age he proved to be an extremely controversial person. On the one hand, Yelo-Malynsky was a recognized lawyer and city judge in Volhynia, while on the other hand, he was involved in a crime including at least two high-profile murders. That circumstance had a great impact on the formation of his reputation and created serious problems in his further activity as a bishop. The issue of national and religious values of Ostafy Yelo-Malynsky is considered separately. It is mentioned that he belonged to the wealthy elite, who followed the Eastern rite at the turn of the 16th–17th centuries. Having opted for the union, he took part in the Lublin Declaration of 1603, which aimed to provide political support to the Union Church and members of the church. Since then, Ostafy Yelo-Malynsky had become one of the few large landowners in Volhynia who professed the Union and had real opportunities to support it.It is noted that granting the privilege to Ostafy Yelo-Malynsky at the Lutsk Diocese met with mass protests of the Volhynian nobility. The aristocratic community mainly did not perceive him as a pastor due to the ambiguous past of the new bishop. This, in turn, was the main reason for the local spread of the Union in the Lutsk-Ostroh diocese.The author made the conclusion that Ostafy (Eugene) Yelo-Malynsky combined in his person contradictory features of his time (aristocratic arbitrariness and the connection with crime, as well as the education, talent of a businessman and the practice of a lawyer). Becoming a bishop, he showed the abilities of an administrator, but did not realize his material potential in the field of philanthropy, and thus remained in the shadow of his prominent contemporaries.

The women’s peace camp at Comiso, 1983: transnational feminism and the anti-nuclear movement

ABSTRACT NATO’s decision to deploy cruise missiles in the small Sicilian town of Comiso (Ragusa, Italy) triggered mass protests against nuclear weapons between 1981 and 1983, with pacifist gatherings and demonstrations taking place across Italy. In Sicily, feminists who supported nuclear disarmament founded the women’s peace camp, La Ragnatela, in March 1983. The camp soon became an international symbol of the feminist peace movement for nuclear disarmament and formed a major hub in a network that connected Comiso both practically and symbolically with the international peace movement and particularly with British feminists at the Greenham Common peace camp in Berkshire. This article examines how these women developed female ways to speak out about war and peace, how they focused political attention on the issues surrounding nuclear armaments and how they addressed the transnational implications of the anti-nuclear feminist movement. An analysis of local archives and oral interviews reveals the extent to which the Ragnatela camp helped launch the proliferation of feminist discourses in the 1980s peace movement, both in Italy and worldwide, through the creation of a web of transnational connections.

Work and workers in the United States: A historic turning point?

The extraordinary collision of crises in the United States in 2020 – biological pandemic, economic recession, and mass protests – presents a unique juncture from which to consider the development of relations of work in the United States in the first decades of the 21st century. In this article, I begin with a brief review of the peculiar institutional context of American labor and employment relations, as the setting for change. The discussion then follows along three dimensions: 1) labor markets, 2) the labor process, and 3) social reproduction. Finally, I consider the implications of recent trends for the current juncture.

Professionals in Revolt: Specialized Networks and Sectoral Mobilization in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT This paper examines the roles of professional networks in mass protests. The extensive participation of professionals in the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong, using their professional expertise, specialized networks and institutional positions, constituted a novel form of collective action. Based on framing analysis of sectoral petitions and interviews with participating professionals, this paper shows that state–corporatist arrangements and social movement abeyance structures laid the foundation for sectoral mobilization in the anti-extradition movement. It reveals the conditions under which professional activism can move beyond individual practices and overcome organizational barriers to generating resources to sustain a mass movement. Perceived threats to the professional ethos triggered cross-sectoral participation. Sectoral mobilization modes and levels were contingent on an array of institutional constraints, informal networks and conjunctural events that made for widespread and legitimate professional involvement in a networked movement.

What Now for the Zimbabwean Student Demonstrator? Online Activism and Its Challenges for University Students in A COVID-19 Lockdown

University student activism is generally characterized by protests and demonstrations by students who are reacting to social, political, and economic challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic revolutionized university student activism, and closed the geographical space for protests and demonstrations. The pandemic locked students out of the university campus, thus, rendering the traditional strategies of mass protests and demonstrations impossible. The COVID-19-induced lockdowns made it difficult, if not impossible, to mobilise for on-campus demonstrations and protests. It seems the pandemic is the last nail in the coffin of on-campus student protests. This theoretical paper uses a collective behaviour framework to explain the evolution of student activism in Zimbabwe, from the traditional on-campus politics to virtual activism. It discusses the challenges associated with cybernetic activism. The paper argues that, despite challenges, Zimbabwean university student activists need to migrate to a new world of digital technology and online activism. In the migration to online activism, students activists face a plethora of challenges. On top of the already existing obstacles, activists face new operational challenges related to trying to mobilise a constituency that has relocated to cyberspace. Student activists utilize the existing digital infrastructure to advance their politics, in spite of a hostile state security system and harsh economic environment, and other operational challenges.

#MassProtests: The Abjuring of the <i>Other</i> and Lessons from Gandhi

In recent years, organizers of mass protests have used social and digital media to form large physical gatherings. These media allow protesters to exchange texts and visuals quickly across vast distances, providing means to organize protests widely and efficiently. Although social media and digital communication have played a constructive and positive role in citizen protests (Gerbaudo, 2012), lately these media have witnessed polarized political discourses. This article examines the 2017 Women’s March, the largest protest in the U.S. history (Fisher, 2019), as a case study of an effective but a polarized protest. I analyze the discourse related to the march based on its mission statement, media reports posted on the march website, and two authoritative books about the march, including a volume published by the march organizers. In my analysis, I use insights of South Korean Philosopher Byung-Chul Han in ways that may help illuminate the problem of polarized online political discourses. My analysis shows that the march succeeded in unifying diverse allies, but it did not engage the other side of the political spectrum. Polarized political discourses weaken governance and encourage a climate in which intolerance and hate find sustenance. A protest is not just an exercise in declamation but also an appeal to a disagreeable other. To support this point, I discuss practices by a master protester, Mahatma Gandhi, who unfailingly reached out to a disagreeable other. I briefly describe his philosophy of nonviolent protests, his three exemplary protests, and discuss Gandhi’s relevance for present-day protesters.

Embattled Ballots, Quiet Streets: Competitive Authoritarianism and Dampening Anti-Government Protests in Turkey

ABSTRACT Mass protests frequently occur in electoral autocracies. However, the opposite is true in Turkey, despite mounting grievances and a strong opposition presence with institutional resources. We argue that competitive authoritarian regimes, a subset of electoral autocracies, may dampen mass protests, allowing the opposition an opportunity to defeat the incumbents through elections. Studying Turkey’s main opposition party, we identify three mechanisms that show how politicians strategically respond to the regime’s incentives and constraints leading to protest-averse behaviour. First, the regime’s repression capacity discourages the opposition from openly supporting a mass protest. Second, the opposition learns to target the median voter, which leads to political moderation and protest averseness. Finally, prospective electoral success reinforces the opposition’s commitment to a ballot-centred approach.

Negotiating civic space in Lebanon: The potential of non-sectarian movements

ABSTRACT Shrinking civic space is a global trend in governance impeding citizens’ enjoyment of the fundamental freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly. While deeply affected by this phenomenon, civil society organizations and collectives in Lebanon have cultivated a series of non-sectarian opposition movements that warrant an assessment of how these may contribute to reconciling deeply divided identities. The authors examine the specific challenges imposed on civil society in Lebanon’s hybrid democratic setting, where power and resources are allocated along confession-based cleavages. Additionally, they discuss the strategies through which Lebanese civil society collectives push back against government pressures and defend, as well as expand, their available room for manoeuvre. The strategies of two recent opposition movements are analysed: (i) the coalition ‘Kollouna Watani’, a crossover into politics for the 2018 Lebanese elections by actors originally associated with civil society organizations, and (ii) the mass protest movement starting in October 2019. The findings highlight these non-sectarian movements’ potential to promote cooperation among the fragmented realms of civil society, as well as the hardships of challenging well-established elites and their interests via formal politicization. In doing so, they also show the potential and agency of civil society to counter the phenomenon of shrinking civic space.

Social Media Use and Pathways to Protest Participation: Evidence From the 2019 Chilean Social Outburst

In this article, we explore the relationship between social media use and participation in protests in Chile. In October 2019, Chile faced the most massive protests since the country’s return to democracy. Due to its magnitude, the media and analysts refer to this process as the “social outburst.” Although these protests engaged broad sectors of the population, most of the protesters were young people. Using a probabilistic and face-to-face survey applied to young people aged 18-29 years, we find that the only social media platform associated with participation in protests was Facebook. Our analysis also shows the importance of the specific activities that people engage in social media. Taking part in political activities on social media is strongly associated with attending protests but using social media platforms to get information or share common interests with other users is not. Furthermore, we examine whether social media has an indirect impact on participation through interpersonal conversation. The results show that Instagram—one of the most popular social media platforms among young Chileans—spurs interpersonal conversation, which in turn increases the likelihood of participating in protests. Our findings suggest that social media still plays a role in shaping people’s political behavior despite changes in the social media environment and in social media consumption patterns.

Archives against the Police

Archives against the Police

The Small Spaces of Global Struggle

The Small Spaces of Global Struggle

Hyperreality of #BlackLivesMatter Movement on Social Media

This study aims to reveal how hyperreality is reflected in using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on social media. The death of an African-American, George Floyd, that involved white police, has sparked outrage and demonstrations in many U.S. states. Issues pertaining to racism sparked in relation to the event, and many people protested demanding justice. The demand for justice then went into a wave of massive global protests both in offline and online realities—the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was widely used on social media when protests were held. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag even became a trending topic on several social media platforms, as if everyone was concerned about the issue and aiming for the same purpose. However, we might find several posts that neither reflected nor were related to the case. Some social media users put the hashtag even though their content substance was not related. This phenomenon then led to a condition of hyperreality in questioning reality from a simulation of reality. The method used in this study is content analysis which measures the sentiment of comments on Twitter and Instagram. The study found that social networking sites mobilised online movements even though they were not directly related to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. On the other hand, hashtag activism reduced the true meaning of the social movement. Therefore, the hyperreality in #BlackLivesMatter could not be seen any longer as a form of massive protests demanding justice and ending violence, but merely to gain more digital presence on social media. Keywords: Black lives matter, movement, social media, hyperreality, hashtag activism.

Does transnational contention lead to transnational memory? The online visual memory of the February 2003 anti-Iraq War protests

ABSTRACT In the last weekend of February 2003, between six and ten million people in 60 different countries protested against the imminent Iraq War. Commentators quickly described the worldwide protests as a manifestation of a new form of transnational contention, which would lead to new forms of transnational memory and identity. Building on efforts to connect social movement and memory studies, this article examines if the massive size and transnational nature of the February 2003 anti-war protests resulted in an equally widely shared and transnational form of memory. Following research that describes the crucial role of visual communication for social movements and memory, it approaches this question by studying the size and shape of the online visual memory of the 2003 anti-war protests. Applying the Google Cloud Vision API to retrieve and analyse 1746 online circulations of twenty-five photographs of the 2003 anti-war protests in the period 2003–2019, we find that, compared to other famous images of protest, the online circulation of images of the protests remains limited. This suggests that the massive protests of 2003 did not result in a widely shared and transnational form of memory. Rather than focusing on individual images, this article argues that studying patterns in their online circulation can explain why some movements remain in the public eye, while others quickly disappear from it.