Search

In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus while war has many negative legacies for individuals and societies, it appears to leave a positive legacy in terms of local cooperation and civic engagement. We discuss, synthesize, and reanalyze the emerging body of evidence and weigh alternative explanations. There is some indication that war violence enhances in-group or “parochial” norms and preferences especially, a finding that, if true, suggests that the rising social cohesion we document need not promote broader peace.

Recent work finds that nonviolent resistance by ethnic minorities is perceived as more violent and requiring more policing than identical resistance by ethnic majorities, reducing its impact and effectiveness. We ask whether allies--advantaged group participants in disadvantaged group movements--can mitigate these barriers. On the one hand, allies can counter negative stereotypes and defuse threat perceptions among advantaged group members, while raising expectations of success and lowering expected risks among disadvantaged group members. On the other hand, allies can entail significant costs, carrying risks of cooptation, replication of power hierarchies, and marginalization of core constituencies. To shed light on this question we draw on the case of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which, in 2020, attracted unprecedented White participation. Employing a national survey experiment, we find that sizeable White presence at racial justice protests increases protest approval, reduces perceptions of violence, and raises the likelihood of participation among White audiences, while not causing significant backlash among Black audiences. Black respondents mostly see White presence as useful for advancing the movement's goals, and predominant White presence reduces expectations that protests will be forcefully repressed. We complement these results with analysis of tens of thousands of images shared on social media during the 2020 BLM protests, finding a significant association between the presence of Whites in the images and user engagement and amplification. The findings suggest that allyship can be a powerful tool for promoting sociopolitical change amid deep structural inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media is frequently an arena of intense competition among major political actors across the world. We argue that a fruitful way of understanding this competition is as coalitions among key actors and their networks of followers. These coalitions can both advance a shared political message and target mutual rivals. Importantly, coalitions can be tacit or explicit, and they do not necessarily depend on direct state manipulation or repression, although they often do. This makes a coalitional framework particularly valuable for studying complex political environments in which online actors blend cooperation and competition. Empirically, we show the value of this approach with novel data collection and analysis of Twitter and Facebook content from 2018–19 in Pakistan, with a focus on the dynamics leading up to and following the controversial 2018 general election. We map out networks of narrative alignment and conflict on Pakistani social media, providing important insights into the relationships among the major political parties, military, media, and dissidents. Future research can fruitfully explore the causes and effects of powerful social media coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature finds that nonviolence is more successful than violence in effecting political change. We suggest that a focus on this association is incomplete, because it obscures the crucial influence of ethnic identity on campaign outcomes. We argue that because of prevalent negative stereotypes associating minority ethnic groups with violence, such groups are perceived as more violent even when resisting nonviolently, increasing support for their repression and ultimately hampering campaign success. We show that, cross-nationally, the effect of nonviolence on outcomes is significantly moderated by ethnicity, with nonviolence increasing success only for dominant groups. We then test our argument using two experiments in the United States and Israel. Study 1 finds that nonviolent resistance by ethnic minorities is perceived as more violent and requiring more policing than identical resistance by majorities. Study 2 replicates and extends the results, leveraging the wave of racial justice protests across the US in June 2020 to find that white participants are perceived as less violent than Black participants when protesting for the same goals. These findings highlight the importance of ethnic identity in shaping campaign perceptions and outcomes, underscoring the obstacles that widespread biases pose to nonviolent mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]