Emergent Protest Publics in India and Bangladesh: A Comparative Study of Anti-corruption and Shahbag Protests

Chowdhury, Arnab Roy; Abid, A.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-05475-5_4

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In developing countries, people's unarmed version of protest has become a regular phenomenon for decades (Zunes, 1994). Particularly in India, public protests emerged in 2011 against various aspects of corruption (Chowdhury and Abid, 2019). The recent political landscape of Bangladesh is also largely dominated by mass public protest events, for example, the Shahbag Movement in 2013.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception Analysis of Nonviolent Public Protests in Bangladesh

Haque

2024

Soc. Sci. Rev.

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Public protests challenging powerful authorities or regimes have been notable features of democratic politics worldwide. There seems to be an increasing tendency among civilians to attend protest mobilizations by relying on nonviolent forms such as sit-ins, slogans, marches, human chains, demonstrations, petitions, and hunger strikes while resisting the adversary. Given the frequent display of public dissent, the conceptual underpinning of this type of protest action is often misconstrued. We know very little about the nature, form, organization, and effectiveness of the unarmed version of contentious political action. This research investigates to what extent people understand nonviolent public protests. In so doing, this study collects opinions of various groups of people to understand nonviolent protest movements in Bangladesh. The data is collected using a survey questionnaire. The findings of the study suggest that nonviolent action is a strategic option for ordinary civilians in Bangladesh. It further shows that the knowledge of the efficacy and potential of nonviolence is not broadly shared, which is why the power of nonviolence is far from acceptable to many groups. The result reveals that nonviolent protest is popular among urban-centric movement organizers and educated young activists, especially students. The study also finds that people envision nonviolent action as a reliable protest tool that can yield significant social and political changes in Bangladesh. These findings can be a good reference for future studies on Bangladesh’s social movements, contentious politics, and collective action. Social Science Review, Vol. 40(2), December 2023 Page: 59-80

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception Analysis of Nonviolent Public Protests in Bangladesh

Haque

2024

Soc. Sci. Rev.

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“…Activists, civil society organisations, and concerned citizens engage with anti-corruption in different manners. There have been many examples in which digital media, and especially social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, played a relevant role in the emergence and spreading of protests in the past decade, including the massive anti-corruption movement that developed in 2011 in India (Chowdhury & Abid, 2019), the wave of massive protests that hit Brazil in 2013 tackling, amongst other issues, also the corruption of the political elites (Saad-Filho, 2013), the youth-led anti-corruption protests that occurred in Guatemala in 2015 (Flores, 2019), or the anti-corruption protests that developed in Romania between 2016(Olteanu & Beyerle, 2018. The widespread employment of social media platforms in Indonesia contributed to creating spaces where citizens discuss information about corruption (Prabowo et al, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Digital media and technologies in grassroots struggles against corruption

Mattoni

2024

Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption

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Corruption is a global social problem that manifests itself in a variety of ways across the world and there are several attempts to counter it, also from the grassroots. Activists, civil society organisations, and concerned citizens engage with anti-corruption in different manners. There have been many examples in which digital media, and especially social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, played a relevant role in the emergence and spreading of protests in the past decade, including the massive anti-corruption movement that developed in 2011 in India (Chowdhury & Abid, 2019), the wave of massive protests that hit Brazil in 2013 tackling, amongst other issues, also the corruption of the political elites (Saad-Filho, 2013), the youth-led anti-corruption protests that occurred in Guatemala in 2015 (Flores, 2019), or the anti-corruption protests that developed in Romania between 2016(Olteanu & Beyerle, 2018. The widespread employment of social media platforms in Indonesia contributed to creating spaces where citizens discuss information about corruption (Prabowo et al., 2018). Furthermore, the use of social media platforms might support the creation of online communities that coalesce around a shared sense of injustice and then, eventually gather in offline mobilisations. This happened in the mobilisations that occurred in Egypt in 2011, in which the Facebook page 'We are all Khaled Said' proved crucial in gathering the discontent of thousands of users against police brutality and, also, the then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's corruption; a sense of disenchantment that went on to flow into the street demonstrations that swept across the country (Alaimo, 2015). While all these cases address the relevant role of social media platforms in anti-corruption efforts, this volume and the chapters in it move their gaze beyond this type of digital media to understand what else is going on in the world of anti-corruption from the grassroots, telling other, often untold, stories.

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