Tweeting India’s Nirbhaya protest: a study of emotional dynamics in an online social movement

Abstract

Previous research has recognized the role of emotions in protests and social movements in the offline world. Despite the current scenario of ubiquitous social media and ‘Twitter revolutions,’ our knowledge about the connections between emotions and online protests still remains limited. In this study, we examine whether online protest actions follow the same emotional groundwork for supporting and nurturing a social movement as in the offline world, and how these emotions vary across various stages of the social movement. Through a computer-assisted emotion analysis of 65,613 Twitter posts (tweets), posted during the Nirbhaya social movement (movement against the Delhi gang-rape incident) in India, we identified a strong resemblance between online emotional patterns and offline protest emotions as discussed in literature. Formal statistical testing of a range of emotions (negativity, positivity, anger, sadness, anxiety, certainty, individualism, collectivism, and achievement) demonstrates that they significantly differed across stages of the social movement; as such, they influenced the course of the online protest, resonating parallels with offline events. The findings highlight the importance of anger and anxiety in stirring the collective conscience, and identify that positive emotion was pervasive during the protest event. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Protesting the police: anti-police brutality claims as a predictor of police repression of protest

Police face a unique dilemma when policing protests that explicitly target them, such as the anti-police brutality protests that have swept the United States recently. Because extant research finds that police response to protests is largely a function of the threat – and especially the threat to police – posed by a protest, police may repress these protests more than other protests, as they may constitute a challenge to their legitimacy as a profession. Other research suggests police agencies are strongly motivated by reputational concerns, suggesting they may treat these protests with special caution to avoid further public scrutiny. Using data on over 7,000 protests events in New York over a 35-year period from 1960 to 1995, I test these competing hypotheses and find that police respond to protests making anti-police brutality claims much more aggressively than other protests, after controlling for indicators of threat and weakness used in previous studies. Police are about twice as likely to show up to anti-police brutality protests compared with otherwise similar protests making other claims and, once there, they intervene (either make arrests, use force or violence against protesters, or both) at nearly half of these protests, compared to about one in three protests making other claims.     

Social accountability as social movement outcome: Protests in a Chinese city

ABSTRACT

Social accountability is a concept that has been used much in development studies and democratic theory to study informal ways for civil society to achieve social change and hold governments accountable. Surprisingly, it has been far less used in social movement scholarship and we argue that social accountability, understood as a combination of answerability, legal claim attainment, and sanction, is a useful way to examine social movement outcomes in China. Social accountability directs the focus of research towards the target of protest and not only whether the protest resulted in policy changes or not. Based on field work in 2013–2015, this article examines four cases of social protests in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. In line with previous research we find that when citizen claims accord with government policies and protesters are well-organized, local authorities tend to accommodate the protesters’ claims. However, answerability and sanction do not always follow the same pattern. Answerability can be relatively high also when legal claims are unsuccessful. This means that cases that are commonly seen as unsuccessful protests because the legal demands were not accommodated may still result in partial social accountability. In addition to the presentation of original empirical findings, the study makes a theoretical contribution by linking the two research fields of social movement and social accountability, which will be of interest to a wider scholarly audience.     

“I Will Be Out There Every Day Strong!” Protest Policing and Future Activism Among Ferguson and Baltimore Protesters

An established body of literature shows that people engage in protest events for a number of reasons, including grievances, collective identity, increased efficacy, and emotions. However, it is unclear what happens to individuals’ motivation toward protest participation as they experience the reality of repressive policing. This study contributes to the theoretical body of knowledge of protest policing and social movements by investigating the microlevel processes that affect protest participation. Specifically, we build from the insights of previous research by examining how 102 Ferguson and Baltimore protesters with varying levels of commitment—revolutionary, intermittent, tourist—experienced repressive policing and how such tactics affected their subsequent decision to engage in future activism. Our findings suggest that those with the strongest commitment toward protest goals experienced the most repressive tactics, and yet did not seem to be deterred in their motivation to be engaged in future protests. In contrast, while repressive tactics appeared to deter the less committed individuals from street protests, they remained motivated to engage in other forms of civic engagement.     

Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks

During the 1970s, the predominant strategy of protest policing shifted from ‘escalated force’ and repression of protesters to one of ‘negotiated management’ and mutual cooperation with protesters. Following the failures of negotiated management at the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, law enforcement quickly developed a new social control strategy, referred to here as ‘strategic incapacitation’. The US police response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks quickened the pace of police adoption of this new strategy, which emphasizes the goals of ‘securitizing society’ and isolating or neutralizing the sources of potential disruption. These goals are accomplished through (1) the use of surveillance and information sharing as a way to assess and monitor risks, (2) the use of pre‐emptive arrests and less‐lethal weapons to selectively disrupt or incapacitate protesters that engage in disruptive protest tactics or might do so, and (3) the extensive control of space in order to isolate and contain disruptive protesters actual or potential. In a comparative fashion, this paper examines the shifts in United States policing strategies over the last 50 years and uses illustrative cases from national conventions, the global justice movement and the anti‐war movement to show how strategic incapacitation has become a leading social control strategy used in the policing of protests since 9/11. It concludes by identifying promising questions for future research.     

Beyond the iconic protest images: the performance of ‘everyday life’ on social media during Gezi Park

ABSTRACT

Using the Gezi Park protests as a case study this article considers the performative component of protest movements including how and why protestors actively produce protest activity ‘on the ground’ and how this is expressed through visual images. It looks beyond iconic images which appear as emblematic of the protest and instead shifts our focus to consider the more ‘everyday’ or mundane activities which occur during a protest occupation, and explores how social media allows these images to have expressive and communicative dimensions. In this respect, protests can be performed through humdrum activities and this signifies a political voice which is communicated visually. The research is based on visual analysis of Twitter data and reveals methodological innovation in understanding how protestors communicate.     

Dynamic preference revelation and expression of personal frames: how Weibo is used in an anti-nuclear protest in China

This study explores the use of Weibo in a protest against a nuclear fuel processing plant in China. This study argues that social media play an important role in the development of protests in non-democratic societies through the mechanism of preference revelation, which blurs the boundary between offline protests and the individualized expression of preferences on social media. Of Weibo tweets which were posted prior to the occurrence of the offline protest, 11,788 protest-related were examined with the aid of a supervised machine learning technique. The results showed that the revelation of personal preferences in the form of individualized expressions of opposition were more common than mobilization and coordination, and such preferences were legitimized by the personal frames of risk and the distrust in government. The use of Weibo to mobilize potential opponents to the project, primarily by calling for the expression of opposition, was less frequent than the use of Weibo to express personal frames. Furthermore, the prevalence of Weibo usage changed dramatically. In the first few days of the protest, the revelation of personal preferences and personal frames of risk were prominent, whereas personal frames of distrust in government were common in the days leading to the street protest.     

What is gained and what is left to be done when content analysis is added to network analysis in the study of a social movement: Twitter use during Gezi Park

As social movements relying on the weak ties found in social networks have spread around the world, researchers have taken several approaches to understanding how networks function in such instances as the Arab Spring. While social scientists have primarily relied on survey or content analysis methodology, network scientists have used social network analysis. This research combines content analysis with the automated techniques of network analysis to determine the roles played by those using Twitter to communicate during the Turkish Gezi Park uprising. Based on a network analysis of nearly 2.4 million tweets and a content analysis of a subset of 5126 of those tweets, we found that information sharing was by far the most common use of the tweets and retweets, while tweets that indicated leadership of the movement constituted a small percentage of the overall number of tweets. Using automated techniques, we experimented with coded variables from content analysis to compute the most discriminative tokens and to predict values for each variable using only textual information. We achieved 0.61 precision on identifying types of shared information. Our results on detecting the position of user in the protest and purpose of the tweets achieved 0.42 and 0.33 precision, respectively, illustrating the necessity of user cooperation and the shortcomings of automated techniques. Based on annotated values of user tweets, we computed similarities between users considering their information production and consumption. User similarities are used to compute clusters of individuals with similar behaviors, and we interpreted average activities for those groups.     

Protesters on message? Explaining demonstrators’ differential degrees of frame alignment

The frame alignment perspective emphasizes the importance of congruence in beliefs between protest participants and protest organizers. Although frame alignment is widely used in social movement research and matters for important movement processes, it has remained largely unclear how we can explain different degrees of frame alignment among protesters. We use empirical evidence regarding organizers’ and participants’ frames, surveying 4000 protesters in twenty-nine demonstrations between 2009 and 2012 in Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The results show that frame alignment depends on variables that tap into protesters’ exposure to organizational and alternative messages. Participants who are recruited by staging organizations, and events organized by strong and more professionalized organizations, display higher levels of frame alignment, whereas salience of the protest issue in the political arena severely constrains frame alignment.     

Contesting middle-class civility: place-based collective identity in Hong Kong’s Occupy Mongkok

The global wave of popular protests since 2011 has highlighted the importance of place to contentious politics. Focusing on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, this article analyzes how place, when dramatized by the practice of protest camping, shapes collective identity formation and contestation. By examining the Mongkok protest camp, I argue that the symbolic meanings being attributed to the place have shaped a collective identity distinctive from other local protests. This place-based collective identity was constituted by two dimensions: a tactical dimension that advocated militant actions against the police and counter-protesters; and an associational dimension that sought to identify with the grassroots in political activism. While its formation helped to galvanize protesters’ solidarity at the early stage of the movement, the two dimensions gradually generated intensive conflicts, which eventually weakened solidarity and the movement claims.     

Local press meets transnational activism: news dynamics in an anti‐WTO protest

Transnational protests often involve a cross‐cultural encounter between “foreign” protesters and the local media and public, whose repertoires of contentious practices and discourses may differ. Examining how transnational and local actors interact in these events is one way to understand the significance and impact of transnational activism. At the same time, local media coverage of transnational protests can also be analyzed as such a cross‐cultural encounter. Following these premises, this article examines Hong Kong media coverage of the transnational protests during the World Trade Organization's 6th Ministerial Conference, which was held in the city in December 2005. The analysis focuses particularly on how this non‐routine news event provided the conditions for a more reflective interactive dynamics between the protesters and journalists, which contributed to emergence of media discourses negotiating and redefining the existing cultural understanding of protest actions. However, the case study also shows the limits regarding how far the redefinition and negotiation can go. Theoretical implications of the analysis are discussed.     

Twitter and video activism as tools for counter-surveillance: the case of social protests in Spain

From a communication perspective, social movements of international significance such as the Arab Spring, Toronto G20, Spanish 15M or Occupy Wall Street have been characterized by the use of mobile communication and social media as tools for video activism and counter-surveillance against the abuse of power committed by the state forces. A representative case of this reality, which reached a high coverage and support in social media environment, can be found in the riots that took place in the Gamonal neighbourhood (Burgos, Spain) in January 2014. In this regard, this article focuses on the denunciation of police violence through video activism by Twitter users during the demonstrations across the country, applying a quantitative–qualitative mixed methodology. First, by means of a content analysis, a sample of 784 tweets linked to videos is analysed in order to identify the main topics and functions of the shared content. Second, a textual analysis of those linked videos of a violent nature recorded by witnesses in order to document police interventions is carried out. The prominent use of Twitter for distributing videos to denounce police violence stands out among the main findings, underlining the audiovisual exposure and ‘secondary visibility’ of the police officers. The results obtained also reinforce the idea of citizen empowerment through the development of an alternative form of journalism, as a practice to criticize the mainstream media coverage of the protests. Additionally, this article sheds light on the open debate about the relevance of social media to encourage citizen involvement in a face-to-face interaction.     

The Scope of Political Conflict and the Effectiveness of Constraints in Contemporary Urban Protest*

This paper examines the effectiveness of the use of constraints (e. g., direct action tactics and violence) by protest groups. It is suggested that the development of theoretical understanding of protest movements requires that scholars turn their attention away from the question, “How effective is the use of constraints by protesters?” and instead address the more refined question, “Under what conditions is the use of constraints by protesters both most effective and least effective?” In pursuit of answers to this latter question, hypotheses are developed suggesting that the effectiveness of constraint utilization depends on the degree and direction of public (third party) involvement in the protest incident. An examination of 212 protests targeted at elected officials and public administrators in American cities during the period between 1960 and 1971 provides support for the following propositions. Constraint utilization will be most effective when third parties are either uninvolved in the protest or when they are involved and unsupportive of protester demands. Under these conditions, constraints may be effective resources enabling protesters to coerce targets into being responsive to their demands. Constraint utilization will be least effective when third parties are involved and supportive of protester demands or are attentive but initially neutral or divided in their support of the protesters. Under these conditions, the use of constraints may alienate those third parties who might otherwise be influential allies of the protesters.     

What do refugees want? Reading refugee lip-sewing protests through a critical lens

Through a close reading of lip-sewing protests by refugees over the past two decades, this article develops a theoretical framework for understanding lip sewing as a form of protest and political agency. I consider various lip-sewing protests by refugees and the strategic use of speechlessness and corporeality in these protests to uncover the conditions in which contemporary refugees are imbricated. I argue that this unusual form of protest, as well as the demands that protesters make on states and international institutions through dissensus, reflects the existence of a new kind of refugee that has emerged in response to the contemporary refugee management system that criminalizes displacement.     

From peaceful marches to violent clashes: a micro-situational analysis

Recent studies point to the relevance of situational factors in the emergence of violence. This paper applies these insights to a systematic analysis of how and why peaceful protest marches transform into violent clashes. It focuses on the micro-situational patterns and emotional dynamics during protests. The exploratory study compares 20 peaceful and violent protests of the Global Justice Movement in the United States and Germany. It employs a triangulation of visual data with document data. The study relies on in-depth qualitative analysis, based on the principles of process tracing. Findings suggest that in those protests where violence emerges, a prior micro-situational pattern is systematically visible. The discussion of exemplary cases shows that two emotional phases precede the outbreak of violence. These phases emerge in a specific temporal danger zone of 1–3 h after the start of a protest. Further, specific triggering moments seem to prompt the outbreak of violence, like the breaking-up of police–protester lines, actors being outnumbered, or falling down. The emotional dynamic between protesters and officers during a protest likewise influences the intensity of violence and how violent situations end. Consequently, the paper suggests that actors need to go through a confrontational micro-situation in a demonstration in order to be able to use violence.     

The new information frontier: toward a more nuanced view of social movement communication

Abstract

The information environment that social movements face is increasingly complex, making traditional assumptions about media, messaging, and communication used in social movement studies less relevant. Building on work begun within the study of digital protest, we argue that a greater integration of political communication research within social movement studies could offer substantial research contributions. We illustrate this claim by discussing how a greater focus on audiences and message reception, as well as message context, could advance the study of social movements. Specifically, we discuss a range of topics as applied to movement research, including information overload, selective attention, perceptions of bias, the possibilities that entertainment-related communications open up, and priming, among other topics. We suggest the risks of not adapting to this changing information environment, and incorporating insights from political communication, affect both the study of contemporary (including digital) protest, as well as potentially historical protest. The possibilities opened up by this move are immense including entirely new research programs and questions.     

When right-wing actors take sides with deportees. A typology of anti-deportation protests

Academic research on activism in migration issues has mainly focused on the actions of either left-wing or far-right activists. As a result, less homogeneous, more complex configurations of actors have been overlooked. This article addresses this gap by drawing attention to unusual alliances of right-wing and left-wing actors as co-partners in the group of key protagonists of anti-deportation protests. Drawing on 96 interviews with actors involved in 15 studied protest cases that took place in Austria, Germany and Switzerland (2005–2013), we find two ideal types of protest, which we call personifying and exemplifying. Personifying protests include right-wing actors, strongly focus on the case of a particular migrant, and do not challenge the principle of deportation as such. In contrast, exemplifying protests do not include right-wing actors. They are carried out by actors with activist experience in NGOs, and more generally criticize deportation and restrictive migration policies. We argue that exemplifying protests are embedded in the solidarity movement, whereas personifying protests, lacking claims of social change or reform, resemble contemporary forms of pragmatic altruistic engagement aiming at individual solutions.     

What is the right way to protest? On the process of justification of protest,and its relationship to the propensity to participate in different types of protest

This study explores how citizens in Spain perceive different tactics employed in anti-austerity protests in 2011–2013, and tests the model of the process of justification of protest. This model combines the elements of Gamson’s collective action frames theory (effectiveness, anger and grievances, operationalized as appraisal of harm) with the concept of legitimacy. It also links justification to the intention to participate. We empirically differentiate between three protest tactics: normative demonstrations, non-normative peaceful strategies, and non-normative violent actions. We find that demonstrations are perceived to be more legitimate, but less effective than non-normative peaceful protests. Violent strategies, on the other hand, are seen to be more effective than legitimate. We postulate and find that legitimacy and effectiveness partially or fully mediate the impact of political ideology, anger, and appraisal of harm on the probability of participation in non-normative protest. Finally, we establish meaningful differences in the predictors of the likelihood of joining normative, non-normative peaceful, or non-normative violent protests. Overall, our results suggest that the study of justification of collective action and especially, the inclusion of the notion of legitimacy, enriches our understanding of the popular approval of and propensity to participate in different forms of collective protest.     

Understanding Persistence in the Resistance

Since Donald Trump's inauguration, large‐scale protest events have taken place around the United States, with many of the biggest events being held in Washington, DC. The streets of the nation's capital have been flooded with people marching about a diversity of progressive issues, including women's rights, climate change, and gun violence. Although research has found that these events have mobilized a high proportion of repeat participants who come out again and again, limited research has focused on understanding differential participation in protest, especially during one cycle of contention. This article, accordingly, explores the patterns among the protest participants to understand differential participation and what we refer to as “persistence in the Resistance.” In it, we analyze a unique data set collected from surveys conducted with a field approximation of a random sample of protest participants at the largest protest events in Washington, DC, since the Resistance began at the 2017 Women's March. Our findings provide insights into repeat protesters during this cycle of contention. The article concludes by discussing how our findings contribute to the research on differential participation.     

Globalization and the policing of protest: the case of APEC 1997

The policing of protest at international events conflicts with the political and policing culture of the host nation. Previous research shows a trend toward softer, more tolerant styles of policing protest within various Western democracies. We present a case study of an exception: the repression of protest at an international event in which one Western democracy hosted rulers of less democratic regimes in a ritual celebration of economic globalization. We explore reasons why, in the face of protests about undemocratic regimes elsewhere, the Canadian government and police were willing to use blatantly undemocratic tactics popularly believed to be more characteristic of those other regimes. Implications are discussed concerning protest policing, economic globalization, the nation-state and social movements.