Street Protests Research Articles

Dynamical modelling of street protests using the Yellow Vest Movement and Khabarovsk as case studies

Social protests, in particular in the form of street protests, are a frequent phenomenon of modern world often making a significant disruptive effect on the society. Understanding the factors that can affect their duration and intensity is therefore an important problem. In this paper, we consider a mathematical model of protests dynamics describing how the number of protesters change with time. We apply the model to two events such as the Yellow Vest Movement 2018–2019 in France and Khabarovsk protests 2019–2020 in Russia. We show that in both cases our model provides a good description of the protests dynamics. We consider how the model parameters can be estimated by solving the inverse problem based on the available data on protesters number at different time. The analysis of parameter sensitivity then allows for determining which factor(s) may have the strongest effect on the protests dynamics.

Nonhuman Animals as Symbols in the #BlackLivesMatter Protests of 2020

Abstract Racial uprisings often include animalized commentary and symbolic use of nonhuman animal bodies. This paper highlights some of the nonhuman animal bodies observed during the #BlackLivesMatter protests within the United States in 2020 – specifically, the use of pig, horse, and dog bodies during street protests. Displays of pigs carry with them a racially rife past in the United States. This history harmed protesters during #BlackLivesMatter protests, being described as suffering “like animals,” and the use of “pig” as an epithet for the police is explored. For the Black Cowboys who joined the protests on horseback, the physical presence of their horses amplified their message, symbolized a shift in their freedom, and positioned them eye-to-eye with the mounted police officers. The use of dog bodies within politics, how they amplified political messages as “sign-carrying vehicles,” and the dangers for them and others in protests are addressed.

Understanding how place is addressed in research on young people’s political action: cases from Sweden

ABSTRACT Following recent critiques of the metrocentric nature of global youth studies, this paper explores the role of place in current research on youth political action in Sweden. Drawing on Agnew’s [2011. “Chapter 23: Space and Place.” In Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, edited by J. Agnew, and D. Livingstone. London: Sage] concept of place and using qualitative interpretive review as our method, we examined three sets of research publications on three different aspects of youth political action in Sweden. Our analysis found that place was addressed differently in each set of publications: youth political socialization and civic engagement were approached as placeless, street protests were examined as place assumed and urban justice movements were studied as place-based. The first two sets of publications contribute to reproducing a metrocentric understanding of youth political action, where urban areas are constructed as the key settings for political action among young people, while rural or peripheral areas are assumed to work in the same way or are depicted as non-political. By contrast, the publications on urban justice movements offered an alternative by exploring political action as place-based. The need to study the place-specific ways that young people do politics is discussed, with its potential to further the understanding of how young people do politics from where they are.

Word on the street: politicians, mediatized street protest, and responsiveness on social media

ABSTRACT Communicative responsiveness of politicians to public opinion signals has become increasingly important for politicians’ electoral fate and citizens’ sense of feeling represented. Although politicians can communicate directly with the public via social media, little is known about the extent, conditions, and favorability of politicians’ responsiveness on social media to public opinion cues. This paper scrutinizes politicians’ responsiveness to one particular public opinion signal: street protest. Do politicians respond to street protest on social media? And if so, when, and how do they react? We address these questions by means of two datasets: (1) a protest event dataset of all protests staged in Brussels (Belgium) between July 2017 and June 2019 (N = 124); and (2) a social media dataset containing all Facebook messages (N = 36.323) and tweets (N = 142.596) by Belgian politicians (N = 236) in the days surrounding each protest. Results show that politicians do respond to protest and its issue; the lion’s share of social media messages supporting protesters. Protest that is large, (inter)nationally coordinated, and organized on socio-cultural issues is more frequently discussed by politicians; left-wing, opposition, and issue-owning politicians are more responsive as well. Whereas especially left-wing politicians endorse protests, right-wing politicians are more prone to discredit it. Responsiveness is thus asymmetric across the political spectrum. Our findings have implications for democratic representation and its challenges in hybrid media systems.

The grey matter of decolonial activism, or, socially engaged art as professional-managerial class

According to Yates McKee, socially engaged art reached its Situationist moment of sublation when the participants at the 2011 Creative Time Summit joined the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters in Zuccotti Park. However, like the ‘Bernie Bro’ left and the Corbynistas, OWS was criticized for its ‘class reductionist’ focus on economic inequality. Through various affinity groups like Decolonize This Place (DTP) and actions like Strike MoMA, post-Occupy artists have increased their commitment to intersectional demands and the effort to decolonize museums. Making use of the Barbara and John Ehrenreich concept of the professional-managerial class (PMC), this article extends the PMC critique from the social democratic left to the realm of activist art, where the question of political representation is both assumed and avoided in calls for Black reparations and Indigenous restitution.

What Comes after a Cycle of Protests?

Two years after the peak of the 2020 street protests for reproductive rights in Poland, Magdalena Muszel and Grzegorz Piotrowski explore the movement's effects on Polish society. Despite the dissipating energy of the participants and continued intransigence of most major parties, this cycle of protests shifted the values and political preferences of specific gender and age groups, as well as affecting the common perception of protest movements in Poland.

WhatsApp, Polarization, and Non-Conventional Political Participation: Chile and Colombia Before the Social Outbursts of 2019

Chile and Colombia are two South American countries with political and economic similarities that, during 2019, faced strong social outbursts, which translated into massive street protests and the weakening of their governments. Using data collected in the period immediately prior to the start of this social unrest, this study seeks to establish the role played by strong-tied social media—which are generally homogeneous, formed by close people, and with a high potential for influencing their members—in three phenomena associated with political conflict: (a) perceived political polarization, (b) affective polarization, and (c) non-conventional political participation. To estimate this influence, information collected through surveys in Chile in 2017 and Colombia in 2018 was used within the framework of the Comparative National Elections project. In both countries, probabilistic samples were employed to do face-to-face interviews with samples of over 1,100 people. In both countries, the results show that the use of social media with strong ties, specifically WhatsApp, tends to be related to two of the studied phenomena: perceived political polarization and non-conventional participation. An interaction is also observed between WhatsApp use and political ideology that amplifies the degree of perceived political polarization, affective polarization, and participation in one or both of the countries studied. We conclude by arguing that this dual phenomenon of polarization and participation can be problematic for democracy, since polarized groups (or groups that have the perception that there is ideological polarization in the political elite) tend to consider the position of the rest of the citizens to be illegitimate, thus undermining collective problem-solving.

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Youth Activism and Global Awareness: The Emergence of the Operation Dagsverke Campaign in 1960s Sweden

In recent years, school strikes and street protests for climate justice have drawn international attention to young people's mobilisation and activism on global issues. This article addresses the need to map the history of global awareness among young people by exploring the origins of the Operation Dagsverke (Operation Day's Work) campaign in Sweden during the early 1960s. Drawing primarily on material from the student-led school council organisation SECO, the aim is to show how young people mobilised support for addressing global issues. The results show that the campaign format was initially developed by university students in 1960, after which it was adapted by students in secondary education. It is argued that the campaign was successful in transforming time, a resource that young students possessed, into economic contributions. On the organisational level, the structure of the student council organisation SECO was important for the campaign's initial success.

Is it Worth the Risk? Grievances and Street Protest Participation During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile

The COVID-19 pandemic started in Chile as the country was experiencing massive protests and a deep political crisis. Sanitary measures restricting movement and gatherings were implemented while the process of constitutional change responding to this crisis developed. In this context of conflict, we study why people continued participating in street protests despite the restrictions and the health risks involved. Using two surveys, we test key factors addressed in extant scholarship: biographical availability, perceived risks, and grievances. We find that grievances related to the pandemic were the most important factor, while biographical availability was much less relevant in the pandemic context. There is no evidence that perceived health risks mattered when deciding whether to join a street protest or not. These results suggest that under conditions of political crisis, grievances related to the administration of the pandemic can motivate political participation even when the latter put people's health at risk.

Riot, Strike, Riot: The New Era of Uprisings

Riot, Strike, Riot: The New Era of Uprisings

What’s the Crowd Got to Do with It?

For a group of antifascist fans who support Eis Hockey Club Dynamo Berlin, street protest and ice hockey games are both sites of left-wing political intervention. Despite the team’s reputation in Germany as “The Nazi Club,” the group aims to cultivate politically minded crowd action and uplift the atmosphere in the arena in hopes of ridding Germany of representations of its authoritarian past.

Performing art as a new form of youth participation and engagement in politics: The case of Chileans’ social outburst

Protest activity has become a central element for political change in Chile. In 2019, during Chileans’ October social outburst, performing arts were in the centre of the street protests. This article explores the inspiration social movements have gained from artistic practices and the role the arts in general have had as a new form of youth participation and engagement in politics in Chile. Also, this article examines the relation between the lack of formal citizenship education in the Chilean curriculum after the return of democracy and the birth of these new forms of political participation and activism within the youth. Additionally, based on the Chilean case, the article argues the need for new conceptualizations of citizenship education beyond the traditional boundaries of education institutions.

Re-Imagining Wasatiyyah as a Socio-Theological Mediation of Youth Anger in Accra, Ghana

The paper recognizes that the current coronavirus has caused an anger spike that has brought in its wake global street demonstrations and protests against the ruling elite. In the case of Ghana, this has found expression in some of the young men and women of the country deploying their anger that brings them into conflict with the police – often leading to either death or destruction of property. Much as the issue of youth anger is transnational, in this article, the researcher focuses on two Muslim inner-cities in Accra, Nima, and Maamobi, to reflect on how wasatiyyah could be appropriated to mediate emerging religiopolitical tension in Ghana and the West African sub-region. It is instead for the sake of convenience of the researcher’s familiarity since, as a resident of a Muslim inner-city in Accra, the researcher seeks to destabilize the simplistic assertion that Islam is a violent religion, while Muslim youth in the urban slum is concomitantly incorrigibly aggressive. Thus, deploying autoethnography and ethnographic techniques of in-depth interviews, the article explores the intersections of Ghana's socio-political history and global and contemporary issues, including Covid-19 have spiked anger that needs critical reflection. The paper concludes that the anger in the Muslim communities in Accra is not isolated from the social history of Ghana and the global context. To keep the security of the country intact and offers the youth hope, wasatiyyah will help in explaining existential inequalities as well as reorienting people to deploy moral outrage productively.

How Local Mass Protests Influence Corporate Board Composition Change

This paper seeks to examine how and under what conditions firms respond to large-scale street protests that do not target business. Corporate elites are more likely to notice and identify with certain social issues when high-volume street protests occur in their community. In addition, a firm’s governance structure shapes its reaction to such mass mobilizations. Using a dataset of S&P 1500 companies for the period 2017-2020, I examine the effect of Women’s March protests on firms’ appointment of new female directors. Empirical analysis demonstrates that a firm is more likely to appoint new female directors when more people participate in Women’s March activities around its headquarters. This effect is stronger when firms have more incumbent female directors and a lower level of transient ownership, and when male directors leave the boardroom. My findings offer new insights into research on how and under what conditions mass mobilization triggers responses from corporations. In addition, this research contributes to the literature on corporate governance by showing how macro-level sociopolitical contexts influence corporate governance and how existing governance structure influences firms’ responsiveness to the social movement.

Uganda: Street Protests

Uganda: Street Protests

Environmental Protest Aesthetics as Decolonial Worlding

Abstract This article makes the case for environmental protest aesthetics as part of a decolonial worlding that encompasses a variety of relational performative acts through which creative resistance to colonialism, capitalism, and resource exploitation is staged. These acts are understood as relational because in their graphics, image-text events in social media, and in their appearances at street protests, they refer to a system that they seek to subvert. The case studies drawn on are Fridays for Future, Klima Action Malaysia and the kristang community in Melaka. Inspired by research on worlding, the aesthetics of protest and performative acts these case studies are examined as manifestations of different facets of decolonial worlding, with a particular focus on the production and dissemination of visual material in the context of environmental protest.

Львів як осередок національного відродження періоду “Перебудови”

At the turn of 1980s the Communist Party leadership dared to introduce a policy of “perestroikaˮ as a way to preserve Russia's political monopoly in a multinational country, the principles of which had been significantly shaken. However, the “perestroikaˮ was unsuccessful attempt to install democratic tools and the elements of a market economy into the autocratic Soviet background and its planned economy. This unnatural synthesis led to a partial weakening of the political regime in the country, which manifested itself in the form of a policy of publicity. It made the numerous communist crimes of the past decades, carefully concealed by the Communist Party publicly available and began the process of demolishing the Communist Party doctrine in general and communist structures in particular. For centuries, patriotic Lviv was one of the first cities in the USSR to perceive “perestroikaˮ not as a democratic renewal, but as an opportunity for Ukrainian national revival. In 1986–1987, “informalˮ societies appeared in the city. All of them came under the control of pro-Russian communist and Komsomol organizations in the city. However, the debating historical, cultural and artistic activities of the young “informalsˮ were filled with national content by semi-legal human rights unions, which advocated depriving the Communist Party of a monopoly on political power in the USSR and thus restoring Ukraine's state independence. The synchronization of the activities of “informalsˮ and human rights activists gradually transformed them into non-communist-controlled national organizations, whose program goals took on anti-communist features and whose activities gave rise to the first street protests. The key feature of 1989 was the rapid politicization of national societies, which lost their “informal” features and accepted the demands of the patriotic public of Lviv. This process resulted in strikes and “rally marathons, which turned the democratic movement into a national one and gave it liberating features. In 1990, the national societies of Lviv became the basis for the consolidation as well as the foundation of political parties that deprived the Communists of power in the city before the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of state independence of Ukraine. At this stage, the national movement was so politicized that it acquired pronounced state-building features. The final stage of Lviv's national revival was 1991. Patriotic citizens, led by political parties, were ready to repel the State Committee of Emergency Situations and were preparing for an indefinite political strike. After the failure of the coup in the USSR, the Lviv national authorities deprived Communist Parties of property and put this organization outside the law.

Performing Shīʿīsm and Martyrdom: The Place of Religious Songs in the #freeZakzaky Occupy Abuja Movement

ABSTRACT This study examines the transformation of IMN’s religious songs associated with IMN’s religious rituals as a means of framing martyrdom in the face of state suppression; protesting against the secularity of the Nigerian State, and calling for the release of IMN’s leader Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky during the #FreeZakzaky Occupy Abuja Movement. Why does the IMN incorporate its religious songs into street protests and what roles does it play in performing pain, suffering, and martyrdom in the occupy movement? This study is framed around the theoretical conceptualization of “radicalism” to understand the causes of the IMN’s radical approaches in ideologies, its frequent confrontational protests against the State security apparatus, and the implication for future religious radicalization. The causes of the IMN protests are performed through songs to narrate the Zaria carnage and the State’s violence against the IMN and reenact the religious ideation of martyrdom. The immortalization of martyrs and the religious ideation of achieving martyrdom became a collective identity of performing suffering and death as a religious necessity for IMN’s true followers amid religious repression during the #FreeZakzaky Occupy Abuja Movement. I argue that the performance of the pain and suffering of past and present events will further radicalize members of the IMN, and in the future, there could be a possibility of some of them integrating into a violent jihadi group as a means of self-defense and religious determination against the predominantly Sunni community, and by extension, the Nigerian State.

How to Become a Philosopher from the (dis)Comfort of Your Own Home

How to Become a Philosopher from the (dis)Comfort of Your Own Home