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Though recent waves of large-scale street protests have not directly targeted the business sector, they can still represent a major development in a company's external environment. Building on the literature on community embeddedness, this study extends activism-as-information theory to understand how and when companies respond to street protests that take place in their communities. We argue that for business leaders, the scale of protests serves as an information update regarding the changing relevance of the protested social issue in a community. Using data from 2017 to 2020 on Women's March protests in the United States, we show that the scale of street protests in local communities is associated with the likelihood of subsequent female director appointments for corporations headquartered in those communities: larger-scale protests are associated with a higher likelihood of such appointments. Further, we show that this response to proximal protests is heightened for protests that occur in local communities least aligned with the protest movement and for companies least internally aligned with the protest goals. Our theory and findings extend research on social movements in markets, showing how and why organizations respond to diffuse community protests, and they enrich corporate governance research on the roles of communities and stakeholders in shaping board composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an original protest event dataset covering 30 European countries and the period 2000–2021, this paper studies the nature and drivers of protest mobilisation across three major crises that have hit European Member States (the Eurozone, refugee, and Covid crises). Contributing a crisis-comparative perspective to social movement research, we explore crisis mobilisation in three steps. First, looking at general protest trends throughout the past decade, we find that the overall level of protest declined significantly, and especially so after the Eurozone crisis. Second, we characterise crisis-specific protest in terms of the action forms and the actors involved. We find a high involvement of institutional actors in the Eurozone crisis, a high share of radical events in the refugee crisis, and a generally non-confrontational protest organised by civil society actors in the Covid crisis. Finally, we explain crisis-specific protest levels by examining the mobilising effect of grievances. More specifically, we study the impact of problem pressure (how hard countries were affected using economic, migration, and public health indicators) and political pressure from public opinion (the salience of crisis-specific issues) and show that both were important drivers in the three crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of digital media in contentious politics? On the one hand, digital media plays a central role in informing the public and organizing political movements. On the other hand, it has become a valuable tool for digital repression in authoritarian states. This study concentrates on the patterns of digital media use by pro-government actors in times of nationwide protests in autocracies. It analyzes how pro-government actors establish control over political discourse and information flow online compared to pro-opposition and neutral actors. I argue that, following the increased use of social media by opposition actors during social movements, the state will seek to establish its presence online, attempt to reach larger audiences, and endeavor to frame political issues in a beneficial light to reinforce political control. I use the cases of the 2020–21 protests in Belarus and the 2022 anti-war protests in Russia and employ text-as-data computational methods to analyze communication patterns on public Telegram channels. The results show that pro-government channels in Belarus and Russia followed the protest paradigm and framed protests as illegal, unauthorized activities that cause chaos and disorder. The pro-opposition Telegram channels in Belarus reached a larger audience than pro-state or neutral channels. In contrast, pro-government and neutral channels in Russia dominated the Telegramsphere. These contrasting patterns of Telegram channel activity and popularity suggest that the Russian pro-government online actors are more sophisticated in controlling and manipulating the communication space than Belarusian pro-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the dynamics of father-children relationships in conflict management during and after the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) movement in Hong Kong. In-depth interviews with 17 fathers and 21 activists revealed how authoritarian approaches to fatherhood influence family conflict outcomes against the backdrop of social upheaval during and after the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. A conceptual framework of intimacy and face (mianzi or lian) enriches the discussion of fatherhood roles, father-children conflict management, and how participation in social movements affects their relationships. The construct of fatherhood is variable, changing, and relational, and it involves intimacy and face for father-son/daughter relationships to remain healthy during political conflicts. Hong Kong presents a unique case of evolving fatherhood, parent-child relationships, and family dynamics where the link between gender and social movement participation is extended beyond political-economic processes. This article contributes to the literature on the intergenerational dialogue between fathers and their activist children outside a Western context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protest, Hong Kong protesters invented, adapted, and deployed a variety of decentralized grassroots tactics of resistance. While understudied, the proliferation of protest zines during the Anti-ELAB movement contributed to an affective community among movement supporters and protesters, allowing them to engage in self- and communal care as they resisted state violence. We argue that protest zines foregrounded a grassroots community of care that encourages political change in the following ways: expand the emotional habitus among protesters and movement supporters to accommodate debilitating bad feelings; promote self-care and embodied emotional reflection as a form of resistance against state violence; contribute to voluntary kinship among protesters beyond the state-sanctioned nuclear family model; and articulate nuclear familial relations as a site of political resistance. By examining how protest zines articulate voluntary kinship among movement supporters, we illustrate how the zines challenge dominant paternalistic institutions to reimagine a more open political future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descriptions of social movement factionalism are often based on the dichotomous conception of lawful moderates and violent radicals. In this article, we nuance this distinction by illustrating the complexity of radical flanks through an empirically grounded analysis of protest tactics, in which we ask under what conditions radical flanks are likely to use violent protest tactics. Exploring dominant explanations of political violence, the article shows the necessity of understanding the use of violent protest tactics as part of cognitive and relational processes. The use of violent tactics varies greatly across frames and protest issues, pointing to how different logics of protest are tied to different frames. Also, the use of violence is affected by the presence or absence of moderate allies; the likelihood of violence clearly decreases when radicals and moderates form coalitions when organising protests. The analysis is based on a protest event data set covering over 3,900 nonviolent and violent events by the Radical Left-Libertarian Movement in Sweden, 1997–2016. Notably, the results hold over this entire twenty-year period, suggesting that they are robust and provide a better explanation than historically contingent causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In liberal democracies, protest can serve as a trigger for necessary policy reforms, but it can also be used by a loud minority to advance political goals against the will of the majority. Focusing on such vocal protests in the context of the Covid‐19 pandemic, we investigate the following question: How does the location of protest events affect the likelihood of political engagement with the protests in a multilevel system? Combining social movement literature with studies of issue attention and rhetorical responsiveness, we analyze how German members of parliaments’ (MPs) responses vary using their tweets from the onset of the pandemic to the German federal election in September 2021. Using quantitative text analysis, we measure rhetorical responsiveness to Covid‐19 protests and apply multilevel regression analyses and difference‐in‐differences. We find that more protests lead to more attention; however, MPs respond most strongly to protests within the state they represent. Furthermore, politicians’ level within the German multilevel system affects their attention to these protests, with MPs elected at lower levels of an electoral system responding more to local protest events than MPs elected at higher levels. The results highlight the importance of the location of protests in attracting political attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse forms of protest in contemporary Iraq have not altered the country's political system and in some respects have reinforced it. This paper argues that the existing literature has not fully explained this protest weakness, due in part to a division between an agency-focused protest literature emphasising discourse, symbolic politics, and the micro-politics of protests, where less attention has been paid to the material and structural elements; and a literature focused on the political system which has typically adopted more macro and structural models. By contrast, this paper uses concepts from Deleuze and Guattari to explore empirical case studies of the encounter between protests and political power in Iraq. It finds the notion of social assemblage useful for drawing the expressive and the material, the micro and the macro, back together on the same ontological plane. Deleuze and Guattari's distinction between the behaviours of rhizomatic (decentred) and arborescent (hierarchic) structures can also clarify a key source of protest weakness in Iraq as the rhizomatic tendencies of the country's political system. This refers primarily to the tendency for destabilisations of the system engendered by protests to function as a mechanism for the expansion of its political power over new social territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I use Tahrir Square as a case study to examine the significance of space to Iraq's October Revolution. I draw on the work of Henri Lefebvre to argue that the revolution in Tahrir Square was a response to the degradation of space in Baghdad after 2003 and delineate how protesters used space tactically to alter the dynamics of contention in their favour. In addition, I suggest that despite the material space of the revolution coming to an end, protesters nevertheless saw what unfolded there as revolutionary because it allowed them to imagine politics anew for the first time since 2003. In this way, I contribute to work on social movements in the Middle East by highlighting the revolutionary potential of the imagination and centring protesters' understanding of it, therefore challenging academic norms about who gets to create theory. This has also allowed me to undertake a nuanced analysis of the events that unfolded in the square, as the focus on the imagination means that I do not need to claim that social relations changed beyond recognition to argue that something of lasting significance took place during Iraq's October Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by policy measures to combat the virus, evoked public protest movements world-wide. These movements were formed not only in the virtual world but also through local protest gatherings. In contrast to previous research that studied movements in the virtual world through digital network analysis, this study recognizes the importance of the spatial dimension of social movements through local interaction. We therefore introduce a large-scale spatial–social network analysis of a georeferenced Twitter user network to understand the regional connections and transnational influences of the local movement through the virtual network. Our findings indicate that the virtual social network is distinctly structured along geographic and linguistic boundaries. Furthermore, our analysis of transnational influences reveals that the connections within Austria itself hold greater significance compared to their impact on external regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of perceived injustice, a huge number of intense anti-World Cup movements took place throughout almost every host city from June 2013 to July 2014 in Brazil. Over a million Brazilians joined anti-World Cup protests in more than 100 cities throughout Brazil in early July 2013, and this civil resistance lasted until the beginning of the World Cup. After the Cup, a number of violent protests in Rio de Janeiro against the 2016 Olympics occurred as well, and these produced far more controversy over the event. This study examines the emergence of social movements against the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games held in Brazil. Despite the importance of the subject, there has been a scarcity of literature addressing networked social movements in Brazil that opposed mega-sporting events and how this relates to theoretical debates about differentiated citizenship and the right to the city. To fill this gap, this article aims to explore the characteristics of protests. Drawing on an analysis of archival sources and interviews conducted during fieldwork in Brazil, this study shows that such demonstrations can be best seen as “networked social movements” that had been struggling for the asymmetric distribution of rights around the neoliberal mega-events. These networked social movements entailed the characteristics of the right-tothe-city movements that intended to subvert the social systems of differentiated citizenship in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to understanding how civil nuclear power shaped post-war British history through studying opposition to nuclear energy in Scotland. Over the second half of the twentieth century, pessimistic assessments challenged the optimism that had developed during the 1950s. Under devolution, Scottish administrations have used planning policies to block future nuclear generating plants, institutionalising a marked distinction with the rest of the UK. The origins of these differences are traced to anti-nuclear protests and the growth of a social movement coalition that linked anti-nuclear activism with growing public sentiment and electoral politics, particularly through the Scottish National Party (SNP). Reflections from oral history interviews are used to examine diverse local protest contexts supplemented by archives from the anti-nuclear movement and the SNP. During the 1970s, protests against Torness power station in East Lothian and the drilling of test bores for waste disposal in South Ayrshire were given a national orientation by SNP politicians. Over the course of the 1980s, the anti-nuclear coalition broadened through growing opposition to Torness and in response to the Chernobyl disaster. These changes encouraged a lasting symbiosis between pro-devolution and anti-nuclear sentiments which were subsequently embodied in policies pursued by devolved administrations during the 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Çiğdem Çidam's book "In the Street: Democratic Action, Theatricality, and Political Friendship" explores the significance of contemporary social movements, such as the Occupy movement and the Gezi Park protests, for political theory. The book argues that political theorists often fail to appreciate the democratic features of protest politics and emphasizes the importance of understanding the working existence of democracy within these movements. Çidam examines the ideas of philosophers like Rousseau, Negri, Habermas, and Rancière to demonstrate how they either overlook or misinterpret the democratic potential of spontaneous action. The book also delves into the case of the Gezi Park movement, highlighting the intermediating practices and political friendships that shaped the movement's dynamics. Overall, "In the Street" challenges traditional evaluations of protest movements based on their success or failure and calls for a reorientation towards democratic intersubjectivity in understanding contemporary protest. [Extracted from the article]

Political scholars express concern for the continued resilience of democracy in the face of multiple crises. In times of crisis, social movements articulate grievances and make demands of political leaders and policymakers. In contrast to the wave of pro-democracy movements following the 2008 global financial crash where protesters demanded accountability from elites, mobilization during the COVID-19 pandemic has defied expectations in several key ways. First, the expectation for protesters to mobilize primarily online in the face of the restrictions and risk associated with large gatherings has not been upheld. Instead, we have witnessed widespread "offline" mass protests. Second, despite high mortality rates and significant disparities in the effectiveness of national public health responses, we have not witnessed widespread mobilizations demanding governments do better to protect citizens from the virus. Instead, we have seen two radically different responses: At one extreme, veterans of "pro-democracy" movements have "pivoted," using their skills and experience to either make up for weak government responses to COVID-19 (Hong Kong) or to reinforce government efforts to contain it (Taiwan). At the other extreme, "antidemocratic" and predominantly far right-wing movements have mobilized against public health measures, circulating COVID negationist and conspiracy messages. Indeed, the political weaponization of disinformation has been a notable feature of pandemic mobilization. I analyze these contrasting trends, highlighting the challenges they pose for the effective handling of the pandemic, and their broader implications for democratic legitimacy and resilience. In so doing, I call attention to the ways that mobilization during the pandemic challenges scholars to revisit some of our assumptions about the dynamics of social movements in times of crisis, and how they can foster or erode democracy. The analysis also suggests that scholars analyzing the impact of information disorders on democracy need to pay careful attention to offline protest as well as online transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diasporas are often viewed as mirrors for their homeland's politics. The Lebanese diaspora's involvement in the 2019 Thawra , however, established the diaspora as a locus for autonomous and disruptive political action. Through an analysis of the spatialities of protest, this paper analyses the diaspora's involvement in the Thawra , its implications for the protest movement, and for the diaspora itself. It argues that diaspora protests gave rise to new tactics and protest repertoires. These mirrored protest activity on the ground, supported protestors in Lebanon, and constituted the diaspora as a locus for contestation and claims-making. Moreover, the diaspora's mobilization in the Thawra contributed to the consolidation of diasporic identity and the construction of alternative societal imaginaries and conceptions of citizenship that challenge Lebanon's state-centric and sectarian citizenship regime. This paper thus makes the case for reassessing the autonomous political role of diasporas to gain a fuller understanding of transnational protest dynamics, solidarities, and citizenship beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This forum explicates Hong Kong's complex religious and ritual landscape and the ways in which it influences social movements and identity making, in response to large forces of religion and protest around the world today, including in Ukraine and places in Asia such as Iran and Myanmar. Scholars have noted how various forms of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and popular Chinese religions have been diffused into the secular spaces of Hong Kong's governing state structures, formal and informal economies, and ad hoc protest organizations in civil society. Recent work has also emphasized the ways that race, ethnicity, and gender have been shaped not only by institutions with religious ties but also by theological and cosmological narratives that circulate through the public sphere. Religiosity in the Hong Kong protests might also be conceived as polyphonic, layering over familial practices with structures that have colonial baggage and postcolonial aspirations. Religion, in such senses, tends to be unbound by secular attempts to fence it into private spheres; it might be seen as forging a new civil society and civil identity through recent protests and shaping new theoretical frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Thailand appeared to be under a tide of youthful revolutionary change. In 2020, in a rare moment in Thai history, university and secondary school students, particularly female and LGBTQ + schoolchildren, took the lead in national protests against an autocratic government. It was a period during which the seemingly impossible, such as the reform of Thailand's royal institutions, appeared possible. What were the historical origins of the country's revolutionary youth movement? This article argues that the Thai youth movement emerged from youth activist networks fostered by post-coup political entrepreneurs. It describes the foundational moments of these networks and analyses their inside brokerage processes, i.e. how these political entrepreneurs cultivated friendships and ties among segregated young activists by creating unique spaces – campsites and activist houses. These underground spaces allowed activists to connect, learn, brainstorm, organize mobilization, and build cross-issue and cross-regional activist ties under an autocratic regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the "protest paradigm" have long explored how a society's mass media system frames the social movements occurring within that society. This study adopts a social movement diffusion perspective to sharpen the transborder dimension of the protest paradigm. Specifically, we introduce the concept of the "diffusion-proofing" protest paradigm, given that an understudied and undertheorized function of the protest paradigm is the prevention of the import of exogenous social movements. Taking the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement as an example, we investigate how mainland China's mass media acted to prevent movement diffusion. Four transborder components of the diffusion-proofing protest paradigm are proposed: reactions, attributions, consequences, and solutions. Through content analysis, we argue that by highlighting these transborder components, China's newspapers attributed the movement's rise to foreign intervention, emphasized the movement's negative effects on both Hong Kong and mainland China, and revealed the uncompromising nature of China's reaction and the urgency of cross-border cooperation for containing the movement and its diffusion. Further, we identify two modes of reporting: a mainly descriptive mode that relied on a local framework to depict the movement and its local context and an evaluative mode that emphasized the level of deviance and foreign intervention, thus amplifying the movement's transborder effects and the need to prevent its diffusion. Notably, the level of deviance acts as a mediating channel between the two modes, transforming the local framework into a transborder one. The diffusion-proofing protest paradigm is also found to vary across media types and periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: Research suggests firms can reduce stakeholder contention (e.g., lawsuits, protests) by collaborating with threatening stakeholders. We propose that by tapping into stakeholder networks and identities, collaborations also produce ripple effects beyond the firm's partner to attenuate contention from a broader set of stakeholders. Using variation in firms' and stakeholders' willingness to collaborate exogenous to contention to account for selection, our examination of contentious and collaborative interactions between 136 environmental movement organizations and 600 US firms corroborates our arguments. Firms face less contention when they collaborate with a better‐connected stakeholder motivated to share affirming information about the firm, or with a more contentious and authentic stakeholder. Our findings generalize to stakeholder criticism beyond movement organizations, suggesting collaborations are powerful tools for fashioning less contentious environments. Managerial Summary: Companies can reduce conflict from hostile stakeholders like social activists by collaborating with their friends. We find social movement organizations mount fewer protests, boycotts, lawsuits, and other conflict against a company that collaborates with an organization that is either well connected in the movement or known for mobilizing movement's grassroots. This suggests that cross‐sector collaborations quell conflict through passing affirming information about a company through interorganizational networks or through the broadcast of an affirming signal to the broader stakeholder environment. We find that criticism from a wide range of stakeholders (e.g., media) also abates, suggesting that collaborations are powerful tools for fashioning less contentious environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the discursive strategies used by #EndSARS protesters in their tweets and Facebook comments to construct SARS officers, hold the Nigerian government accountable and demand social change. Informed by social media critical discourse analysis (SMCDA) and social movement theory, the analysis revealed three strategies: constructing SARS as oppressors, representing the Nigerian government as insensitive and issuing a clarion call for action. The analysis shows that these strategies enabled the protesters to construct the victim-aggressor categorisation, thereby legitimising their resistance to police brutality and demand for change. The study also highlights how the protesters deployed local linguistic resources and ideologies to appeal to the emotions of other Nigerians to join the protest. The study demonstrates how digital political mobilisation can galvanise reform in Nigeria, where leaders and law enforcement agencies are held accountable for their (in)actions. This study contributes to the developing interdisciplinary studies on SMCDA and digital activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on the relationship between political parties and social movements draws mainly from European cases, and has rarely captured the kinds of relationships that may exist in other parts of the world. This article addresses the gap by shedding light on the dynamics of party–movement relationships in Thailand. We examine the connections between two Thai political parties and a variety of protest movements. Our analysis demonstrates that Thailand's Move Forward Party and its predecessor the Future Forward Party can be classified as movement parties, but that they operated differently. While Future Forward was a clandestine movement party, concealing its origins in grassroots activism, Move Forward later revealed its activist roots and underwent a transformation from a clandestine to a fully fledged movement party. This change was triggered by two emerging conditions: the rise of student-led mass movements and collective demands for radical change that had been ignored by other political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the globe the amount and frequency of social protests have been increasing. However, we do not fully understand when such protests are effective. This is in part due to conflicting findings in the literature, and the lack of a framework that can integrate these divergent findings about why types of social protests are effective. We introduce a framework for evaluating effectiveness of social protest made up of three components: (i) what types of action are being considered; (ii) what target audience is being affected; and (iii) what outcomes are being evaluated? We apply our framework to organize the literature, and in doing so find a pattern that suggests that normative nonviolent forms of action may be most effective in mobilizing sympathetic target audiences, and more extreme disruptive action may be effective at motivating policy concessions from resistant target audiences. Around the world, people engage in social protests aimed at addressing major societal problems. Certain protests have led to significant progress, yet other protests have resulted in little demonstrable change. We introduce a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of social protest made up of three components: (i) what types of action are being considered; (ii) what target audience is being affected; and (iii) what outcomes are being evaluated? We then review relevant research to suggest how the framework can help synthesize conflicting findings in the literature. This synthesis points to two key conclusions: that nonviolent protests are effective at mobilizing sympathizers to support the cause, whereas more disruptive protests can motivate support for policy change among resistant individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 8 August 2019, Israa Ghrayeb, a 21-year-old Palestinian living in Beit Sahour, was brutally beaten by members of her family. Since that moment, protests have erupted throughout historical Palestine and beyond, also reaching Palestinian women of the diaspora. Not only did this eventful protest mark the resurgence of a wave of women's protests in Palestine, but it also brought about the start of a new feminist and anticolonial movement: Tal'at. Using frame analysis to examine the movement's declarations, Facebook posts, and the archival material available at the Basso Foundation Archive, together with firsthand data collected through interviews conducted during my fieldwork in Historical Palestine, I will try to answer the following questions: How does this new feminist protest-movement differ from the previous ones? What are the elements of continuity with previous Palestinian women's movements? How did this movement manage to frame an aggregating message in such a fragmented territory? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational research has increasingly recognized violence as an instrument for achieving compliance and maintaining the existing order. However, resisters tend to be portrayed as powerless in the face of this violence or engaging in hopeless acts of resistance. In comparison, by examining the context of violent protests, this paper discusses how activists can endure and use violence as part of their resistance. I build on a 15-month ethnography of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement to illuminate the absorptive resisting work involved in deploying resistance to and through violence. This absorptive resisting work included reducing the repressive effects of violent protests and embracing those effects to generate symbolic and discursive resources against police violence, as well as including violent protest tactics in ways that regenerated those resources. Ultimately, my findings reveal that this absorptive work allowed resisters to withstand violent protests in the short term and reframe them in the long term. This paper thus contributes to studies on resistance to violence by showing how people can effectively and collectively catalyze violence to challenge it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite evident and oft-cited disparities in the policing of right-wing extremists and more progressive social movements, we understand much less about how such distinctions emerge and unfold as the police prepare for, and act within, protest events. How does the racial and political orientation of social movements affect how they are policed? What are the processes through which such effects are realized? In contrast with most existing studies of protest policing, which emphasize how the actions of authorities are conditioned by the degree of threat associated with, for example, the size or capacity for violence of a given protest target, the analysis here of a cluster of cases associated with the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, recognizes the constructed nature of protest threats and highlights how those assumptions inform and interact with police planning and action. Findings emphasize how the degree of alignment between police and protesters shapes policing agents' preparations for, and operational considerations within, protest events. This alignment provides a basis for asymmetric communication, differential assessment, and—ultimately—distinct treatment of different protest targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autocrats typically respond with coercion when citizens take to the streets demanding political reform. Sometimes, however, they tolerate mass protests and even give in to protesters' demands. While the effect of coercion on mobilization is well-studied, we know less about the role of concession-making. We argue that accommodating demands is rarely an effective strategy in demobilizing opposition movements. Authoritarian rulers are usually neither willing nor able to fully address protesters' dynamic demands, nor can they offer credible commitments. We conduct a quantitative analysis using multiple cross-national data sets to empirically assess the relationship between concessions by the government and subsequent mass mobilization. By analyzing protest events in temporal and spatial proximity, we estimate the effect of making concessions on protest mobilization at the subnational level in 18 autocracies from 1991 to 2012. Our results indicate that concessions are associated with a significant and substantive increase in subsequent protest activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media-based communication between social movements and other actors is relevant to achieve their goals. This article addresses the dynamic and contentious aspects of the mediabased communication generated by the Magallanes Social Movement and the Government of Chile. A quantitative analysis was made of 217 news and 499 quotations published during the events. The results indicate that the parties adopted differing communication strategies like making calls for action, talking positively about the own group, among others. Furthermore, the content of communications varied over time, but the strong relation between the communications issued and the occurrence of particular protest events suggests that while a communicational contest is certainly an interactive process, both camps do not just argue through the words, but also through the events that each camp organizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing consensus about the complementary nature of institutional and noninstitutional politics as means to push forward policy agendas. However, the bulk of research tends to concentrate on one aspect of this relationship, namely, how social movements influence the political arena, for example by impacting different stages of the policymaking process and creating new political parties. There is comparatively less understanding of the reverse dynamics: the degree to which political parties also influence the protest arena by adopting and utilizing strategies and tactics commonly associated with social movements and by connecting to demonstrators. Focusing on Argentina and Chile, two countries that have experienced massive protest waves in recent years, this article examines the presence of political parties in the organization, staging, and channeling of demonstrations. Given that the reception of political parties in demonstrations is closely tied to whether they are welcome in the protest arena or not, we also analyze how Argentine and Chilean protesters perceive political parties and the level of identification they feel with them. Our primary data source comes from 1 935 surveys conducted as part of the Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation (ccc) network between 2015 and 2017. We found that political parties in Argentina exhibit stronger ties to social movements compared to those in Chile. We seek to link this outcome to divergent and historically rooted patterns of protest dynamics in both countries and discuss the implications of our findings in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political demands are a relevant factor in protest participation. However, most studies examined demands as a tactical tool, and it remains unclear how the endorsement of collective demands may contribute to creating the mobilization potential. This analysis examines how collective demands facilitate links of collective identity, efficacy, and grievances with sympathy for normative and non‐normative protest actions in the context of Hong Kong's anti‐extradition law amendment bill social movement. The results show that collective demands are directly and indirectly related to sympathy for protest action and moderate the role of political dissatisfaction in forming the mobilization potential. The analysis also reveals distinct associations of sympathy for normative versus non‐normative protest action with facilitating factors. These results are discussed with respect to their theoretical and practical relevance in forming the mobilization potential and how they may contribute to understanding social movements more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the National Lawyers Guild's (NLG) extensive support for radical left activists and progressive social movements, highlighting its holistic approach to legal support beyond legal observing. Topics include NLG's diverse legal support initiatives, such as monitoring police misconduct, defending activists in court, setting up legal offices during protests, and collaborating with activist-led legal collectives and community-based groups.

'System change not climate change!' has been one of the prominent slogans the climate movement used during its ever growing campaigning against coal mining and the causally linked climate change. This article traces climate camps as a form of protest for a social movement and investigates its concepts. In analysing its intertwinement with particular sites of pollution, the environmental and the left movement, it demonstrates that the movement's broader aims of changing the system and reaching a better life for all might not always be reached, not even in the small scale of its own practices. Yet, as the juxtaposition of concurrent protest action and political, cultural and industrial development shows, climate camps in Germany, at least, have been making an impact, even if the impact is not unanimously called a success or recognized by all stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular music was the most immediate way in which the cultural response to 9/11 manifested itself. Initially music offered a way of mourning and coping with grief. As the United States moved toward the invasion of Iraq, pop music also began to reflect the divisions in society between patriot-artists who supported the invasion, most notably in country music, and protest-artists who articulated critical attitudes to war. These anti-war songs did not attain the stature of those that characterized the era of protest during the Vietnam War, nor did they offer a musical accompaniment to a social movement with any enduring political significance. One little observed dissonance that a longitudinal survey of the musical response to political violence reveals, however, is that over time the attitudes of protest songwriters and the patriots transvalued. Ironically, interventionist "rednecks" became disillusioned with the endless wars of intervention, whilst the "protest" writers lost their voices after President Obama came to power. Ironically, icons of popular music instead turned their ire on those who voted for an anti-establishment President Trump who vowed not to involve the U.S. in further military adventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the recent protests in Iran, ostensibly driven by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, are a symbol of a far greater dissatisfaction with arbitrary rule, corruption, and incompetence. While compulsory veiling was the immediate cause, the main drivers are the ailing economy and the decline in public services. Given the depth and breadth of street protests and the ongoing civil disobedience, the Islamic Republic simply cannot return to business as usual. At the same time, the regime is incapable of reinventing itself. It faces political and socioeconomic constraints and a mix of demographic and environmental challenges, among others. As for whether outside pressure can help protesters, the West must balance its championing of the movement with its pursuit of diplomatic engagement on Iran's nuclear program. And Iran is now getting more international assistance by looking eastward to China and Russia. With the government and security forces willing to use violence against protesters, civil disobedience may be the only method to systematically challenge the ruling order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Black Women and the Black Freedom Struggle" is a review of two books, "Jim Crow Capital" by Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy and "Strategic Sisterhood" by Rebecca Tuuri. The reviewer praises both books for their well-written and well-researched content, which highlights the roles of Black women in social justice movements in the United States. The books challenge previous histories that marginalized Black women's contributions and focus on the work of working- and middle-class women in the Black Freedom Struggles. The review emphasizes the importance of recognizing and celebrating the stories and people of earlier protest movements, especially in the context of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations happening across the country. [Extracted from the article]

What are the factors that drive how legislative actors respond and manage protests during social movements? Protests are taken as a feature of democratic expression. However, when they escalate into extreme violence, threatening lives and property, they also impact on how legislators as key governance actors channel the direction of their choices. Among many theoretical explanations, we single out the rational choice theory (RCT) as an analytical framework to assess Nigeria’s 2020 #EndSARS protests. This is because of the RCT’s explanatory focus on how macro-societal, meso-institutional and microindividual level factors shape actors’ preferences, limiting decision making options. During #EndSARS, legislators and legislative symbols were targeted by peaceful and violent protesters alike, and we draw on this to analyse the extent to which the RCT provides explanations for legislative behaviour and the rationality of legislative choices on the one hand, and how the actions demonstrate legislative preferences in responses to protesters, on the other hand. Drawing on secondary data sources complemented with interviews with legislators, we argue instead that the explanations to variations and similarities in the behaviour of legislators during violent protests are largely domiciled at an adjusted meso-level of action where new stakeholders, interests and complex decision-making problems. This, in turn, limits alternatives, patronage and the wider engagement that should inform legislative interventions. To navigate this, legislators adopt a collective than individualised approach to engaging with protest stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eradicating the mistreatment of Puerto Rican women and people that local and U.S. governments enact has been a major transformative goal for Puerto Rican feminist movement communities. The celebration of International Working Women's Day presents optimum opportunities for organizations to celebrate and make visible the monumental achievements of Puerto Rican women and people. Similarly, they foster the opportunity to strategically protest the large-scale and harmful attacks of the United States and Puerto Rico's (abbreviated throughout as U.S. and P.R.) governing double-bind onto minority Puerto Rican populations. Feminist activists, protesters, artists, and attendees collaborate in performances, speeches, and overall programming, resulting in dually celebratory and protest-based marches. Further, the multifaceted approach to protesting observed at the celebration of International Working Women's Day shines light on decolonial and feminist efforts that bring about social justice and transformation. This article analyses ethnographic data collected through participant observation in one march held in Puerto Rico, as well as a small archive of news articles relating to said march. Results reflect strategic forms of organizing and protesting that exercise activists' agency in communication with the government and state. Further, they show the demand for accountability and action in favor of minority Puerto Rican populations. Simultaneously, the results also shine a light on the synergistic character of state and government approaches to minimize the impact of activist protesting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, South Africa has experienced a consistent wave of local protests rooted in impoverished residential areas. Given the centrality of ideas about community within these protests, and building on Gramsci and Katznelson, this paper characterizes low-income residential areas as the "community trenches" of contemporary working-class struggle. Drawing on 29 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 287 interviews, I probe the meaning of community within local protests and its relationship to possibilities for building democracy from below. I argue that current manifestations of community have both benefits and limits: they help protesters to build solidarity across division and infuse their struggles with moral weight, but they also encourage localization, geographic isolation, and internal conflict. With reference to both historical and contemporary South African examples, the paper offers three possible rearticulations of community that—when woven together through interscalar connections—may facilitate democracy from below: community as participatory democracy; community as a right to the city; and community as national citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, the number of protests has increased rapidly in Romania, what many participants in these movements do not know is that they are regulated by the law of public assemblies and any organization or participation in such a demonstration must strictly respect these laws and regulations . Law no. 60/1991 on the organization and conduct of public assemblies guarantees the freedom of citizens to express their political, social or other opinions, to organize rallies, demonstrations, demonstrations, processions and any other gatherings, as well as to participate in them, with the condition that the public assemblies in question are peaceful. Public gatherings that take place in markets, on public roads or in other open air places must be declared in advance to the relevant authorities and it is not allowed that they prevent the normal use of public roads, public transport, except for those authorized, the operation of public or private institutions, of education, culture and health or of economic units. Administrative institutions and local police bodies are obliged to ensure the smooth running of public gatherings, and the organizers are obliged to ensure all the necessary measures for the public gathering to take place without incident while respecting the provisions of the law. The organization of public gatherings is prohibited in immediate proximity to railway stations, ports, airports, metro stations, hospitals, objectives, economic units with installations, machinery orimachines with a high degree of danger in operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forms of protest and the related tactics that structure them are often linked to a deliberate logic of disruption and contestation. From pickets aiming to impede foot traffic in public spaces, to more "spectacular" forms of protest such as setting public property alight, these decisions are often far from the spontaneous acts of "violence" that they are depicted as by various news agencies and similarly aligned public officials. Using the example of a social movement based in Cape Town, South Africa, named Reclaim the City, this article thinks through different forms of protest, and how they are leveraged and perceived by a range of actors. By framing this discussion through James Scott's (1998) work on legibility, this paper argues that social movements and similarly composed groups strategically navigate the process of being made legible by the state at different points for various reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some governments manage to curb protest while others cannot and turmoil escalates to a social outbreak? This study proposes a theoretical argument that specifies how discretionary spending reduces conflict, highlighting the role of social movements in managing protests. It examines this and alternative arguments in Argentina, a country with strong social movements and historically large mobilizations, using statistical analysis with an original database on protests and a population of 364 national government programs between 2008 and 2019. The article makes a contribution by finding a differential effect between specific types of social spending, programmatic and discretional, and protests. It also specifies the linkage between the main variables using qualitative evidence during two presidencies. The goal of discretionary distribution is not to win an election but to ensure governance. The article finally raises some comparative implications on the role of social movements and welfare spending in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the phenomenon of protest and the dynamic of societal act in the environment and contexts of the Arab region, most of which are produced under the conditions of protest, and the growing sense of indignation and dissatisfaction, and in the context of authoritarian and violent political and cultural structures and low civic values. The research aims to dismantle the growing phenomenon of protest movements in the Arab world (2010-2020), from where the structure of their formation and their mobility frameworks, and to increase the role of new social forces as agencies and mediators in the conflict between society and power, seeking to express themselves and raise their demands through protest and demonstration, beyond the limitations of traditional media such as political parties and trade unions. The paper theoretically approaches the topic from the perspective of social movements frameworks and developments in public space entrances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, statues of Gandhi have been attacked by a variety of radically incommensurable movements. Subaltern social movements struggling to dismantle the legacies of colonialism, slavery and apartheid have attacked Gandhi on the grounds of his alleged racism, casteism, misogyny and because he functions as a cipher for the imperialism of the contemporary Indian state and the racism of Indian society. Yet little about the case against Gandhi is new. This article explores why these arguments are being voiced now by identifying three discursive vehicles that have given them salience – decolonisation in the African academy, US-originated Afropessimism and a resurgent global Dalit movement. The article juxtaposes this global picture with the range of contradictory attitudes expressed towards Gandhi in India, where a state dominated by the neoliberal Hindu Right promotes Gandhi abroad at the same time as it sidelines him at home. Simultaneously, Gandhi is attacked by its domestic electoral base while remaining a talisman for its opponents as a symbol of an elusive communal harmony and environmentalism. In revealing how Gandhi is toppled by radically incommensurable social movements and how attitudes towards Gandhi do not map neatly onto power, the article complicates ongoing debates about decolonisation, memorialisation and heritage. • Surveys protests against Gandhi statues in the last twenty years. • Outlines arguments made against Gandhi in these protests. • Explores sources of protest in African decolonisation, Afropessimism, Dalit movement and the Hindu Right, and accounts of the renewed salience of their arguments. • Demonstrates that Gandhi statues are being brought down by radically incommensurable movements for different reasons. • Demonstrates that subaltern social movements both revile and revere Gandhi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discursive experiences can contribute to shaping lives and their identities. For minoritized youth in Hong Kong, the 2019 protest movement provided many such experiences, although very little has been heard about them. Instead, reporting has focused on the experiences of the dominant Chinese population. This paper aims to highlight the voices of minoritized youth in relation to the social movement that dominated Hong Kong in the second half of 2019. It is well recognized that identity is not fixed and that there are more likely multiple identities that transition from one to the other. Yet little is known about the influences on identity formation and the processes that underlie them. This was the issue addressed here. The paper draws on Lacan's theory of identity in examining interviews involving minoritized youth and their engagement in Hong Kong's 2019 protest movement. It shows how individual responses to the movement differed, how the movement challenged identities, and how these challenges were resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EndSARS protests that swept across Nigeria in [insert year] marked a pivotal moment in the nation's history, representing a collective outcry against systemic police brutality and an impassioned demand for justice and accountability. Rooted in the discontent with the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the movement garnered unprecedented momentum, drawing diverse groups into a unified call for societal change. However, given the current Nigeria situation after the EndSARS protest, does it p and social media activisming impact on the sociopolitical landscape of Nigeria? It is in this regard, that this study adopts a comprehensive approach, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses to provide a nuanced understanding of the motivations behind the protests, the profile of the protesters, and the strategies employed to amplify their voices. Concerning this, ....... questionnaires were distributed among the respondents and the result obtained was analyzed using a descriptive and analytical method. The findings of the study unravel the intricacies of the EndSARS protests, shedding light on the diverse backgrounds of the participants and their shared grievances which is necessitated by bad governance. Furthermore, it assesses the immediate and long-term impacts of the protests on policy reforms, public perception, and the overall discourse surrounding governance and accountability in Nigeria. The study further conclude and recommend the need for a transformative potential of grassroots movements in challenging systemic issues. It emphasizes the need for sustained efforts to address the root causes of social discontent and advocates for continued civic engagement to ensure lasting change. It was further recommended that there is a need to include policy reforms, institutional changes, and ongoing dialogue between the government and civil society to build a more just and accountable society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to provide a framing perspective on the study of development communication. This study explains the causes of the emergence of social movements in Indonesia in rejecting the Omnibus Law. The protests against the Omnibus Law that occurred in various cities in Indonesia as a form of resistance to government policies were examined from the perspective of framing theory. The method used is text analysis with Robert N Entman’s framing framework. The unit of analysis is the Omnibus Law protest news published in Tempo Magazine in October 2020. The results of this study indicate that social movements to reject the Omnibus Law were carried out by various elements of society, ranging from workers, students, and other elements of society. Even though the Omnibus Law was finally signed by President Joko Widodo on October 5, 2020, the protest effort remained an important note that this law has many loopholes that are considered to be detrimental to elements of society, potentially damaging the environment, and weakening government authority area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims made during mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and Thailand in 2020 became increasingly transgressive. Localist demands and calls for the reform of the monarchy, respectively, violated conventional political norms in these two hybrid regimes. This paper examines the dynamics of opposition discursive radicalization during ongoing autocratization. Observational data and protest event analysis are employed to assess the scaling up of claims-making and its relationship to protest size and group solidarity. The paper argues that radicalization can best be understood relationally, between a hybrid regime, on the one hand, and moderates and radicals in the opposition, on the other. It identifies the following three points of convergence that lead to similar protest trajectories in both cases: the marginalization of moderates along with their gatekeeping role of transgressive discourses; the creation of digitally enabled protest networks that facilitated mass mobilization and claims diffusion; and the intensification of protest policing that provoked a departure from reformist to revolutionary claims. The argument offered here shows similarities to but also nuanced differences from the repression literature and casts doubt on the assumptions about the demobilizing impact of autocratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]