Protests by the young and digitally restless: the means, motives, and opportunities of anti-government demonstrations

Ang, Adrian; Dinar, Shlomi; Lucas, Russell E.

doi:10.1080/1369118x.2014.918635

Cited by 22 publications

(22 citation statements)

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“…At best, there is a complex relationship between Internet penetration rates and political activism, usually contingent on other social factors being present. This has been demonstrated a number of times (Alterman, 2011; Couldry, 2014; Noveck, 2000; Xenos and Moy, 2007) and even recently again by Ang et al (2014) who demonstrate this in their large, cross-national study of anti-government protests in 153 countries over 26 years. They found that on its own, the variable of ‘technological penetration’, or the increased availability to use ICTs in protest, was associated with reduced protest count, suggesting increased apathy as opposed to activism with increased technological means.…”

Section: Critiquing the Relationship Between Social Media Politics Amentioning

confidence: 77%

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Phatic culture and the status quo

Miller

2015

Convergence

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Apart from the exchanging of information, an important role of conversation and communication is to promote social harmony through the maintenance of relationships. This is referred to as the ‘phatic’ function of communication. Indeed, digital communications technologies, and social media in particular, have been lauded for their potential to promote activism and social change through ‘raising awareness’ of injustices, their ability to motivate people into political action and the facility to organize and coordinate that action for maximum effect. In this article, I build upon previous arguments, which suggested that the rise of social networking demonstrated that online culture and communication had become increasingly phatic and less dialogic. Here I use previous empirical work to challenge the above claims of digital politics enthusiasts. I then suggest an alternative theoretical account of the function of digital media activism which better suits these empirical findings. I suggest that digital politics demonstrates a rise of ‘phatic communion’ in social media. Incorporating Heidegger’s notion of ‘idle talk’, I further suggest that the rise of a phatic online culture in social media activism has atrophied the potential for digital communications technologies to help foster social change by creating a conversational environment based on limited forms of expressive solidarity as opposed to an engaged, content-driven, dialogic public sphere.

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Section: Critiquing the Relationship Between Social Media Politics Amentioning

confidence: 77%

“…They conclude that:The “year of the protester” is situated in a larger structured pattern of protest behavior, and that youth bulges and ICT affect protest activities in a more complicated and nuanced manner than the conventional wisdom suggests. (Ang et al, 2014: 1240)…”

Section: Critiquing the Relationship Between Social Media Politics Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Phatic culture and the status quo

Miller

2015

Convergence

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“…Urbanization plays an important role in many of the theories involving the emergence of protests and social movements (Ang et al, 2014; Gleditsch & Rivera, 2017; Grinin & Korotayev, 2009; Goldstone, 2002; Tilly, 1995; ). According to Political Opportunity theory, social-structural phenomena, for example, urbanization, population growth, and industrialization, can lead to political cleavages in a society when they are coupled with democratization, politicization, and mobilization (Tilly, 1995; Bartolini & Mair 1990, p. 216).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urbanization, the Youth, and Protest: A Cross-National Analysis

Sawyer

Slav

2021

Cross-Cultural Research

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Demographic changes associated with the transformation from traditional to advanced economies are the basis for many of today’s theories of violent and non-violent protest formation. Both levels of urbanization and the size of the “youth bulge” have shown to be reliable measures for predicting protest events in a country. As these two processes result from modernization, it seems logical to hypothesize that the combined effect of the rise in urbanization and the increase in the youth population, urban youth bulge, would be a more relevant predictor for protests. Our tests on cross-national time-series data from 1950 to 2010 for 98 countries reveal that the combined effect of the two forces is an important predictor of anti-government protests. It may seem that the role of the urban youth bulge would appear to be an issue of the past as in more recent decades the proportion of the urban youth tends to decline in most countries of the world. However, this factor tends to be very relevant for many developing countries where both youth bulges have been growing for several decades and the general urban population is on the rise.

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“…The level of economic development is a relevant indicator to the intensity of political protests and has shown to be consistently correlated with political protest events. A large number of studies have pointed to the fact that levels of GDP per capita tend to promote anti-government protests (Ang, Dinar, & Lucas, 2014;Brancati, 2014;Dalton and van Sickle, 2005;Korotayev, Bilyuga, & Shishkina, 2018;Korotayev, Vaskin, Bilyuga, & Ilyin 2018;Nam, 2007;Su, 2015). This strong correlation can be explained in several ways; (1) economic development is strongly correlated with more democratic regimes (Lipset, 1959;Boix, 2011;Brunk, Caldeira, & Lewis-Beck, 1987;Burkhart & Lewis-Beck, 1994;Cutright, 1963;Dahl, 1971;Epstein, Bates, Goldstone, Kristensen, & O'Halloran, 2006;Londregan & Poole, 1996;Moore, 1996;Rueschemayer, Stephens, & Stephens, 1992).…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a cross-national study of 145 countries from 1960-2006, Caren, Gaby, and Herrold (2017) detected a negative correlation between the number of contentious events and economic growth, with the strongest effects felt in countries experiencing extreme economic decline and in non-democratic regimes. Considering that more protests also tend to occur in times of economic depressions, when citizens have more pressing economic grievances (Brancati, 2014;Ang, Dinar, & Lucas, 2014), a further control for GDP per capita annual growth was also added to our models, originating from the V-Dem dataset (Coppedge, et al, 2020). Furthermore, to control for the effect of inflation, which also has a tendency of being an underlying factor which contributes to the intensity of political protest (Korotayev, et al, 2013) an indicator for in inflation rate of the consumer price index will be added as a control from the World Bank (World Bank, 2020).…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Populism and Protest Intensity: A Cross-National Analysis

Patrick

2021

SSRN Journal

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Protests by the young and digitally restless: the means, motives, and opportunities of anti-government demonstrations

Cited by 22 publications

References 51 publications

Phatic culture and the status quo

Phatic culture and the status quo

Urbanization, the Youth, and Protest: A Cross-National Analysis

Populism and Protest Intensity: A Cross-National Analysis

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