Solely not often:
Current social actions stand out by their spontaneous nature and lack of secure management, elevating doubts on their capability to generate political change. This text offers systematic proof on the results of protests on public opinion and political attitudes. Drawing on a database protecting the quasi-universe of protests held in america, we determine 14 social actions that happened from 2017 to 2022, protecting subjects associated to environmental safety, gender equality, gun management, immigration, nationwide and worldwide politics, and racial points. We use Twitter knowledge, Google search volumes, and high-frequency surveys to trace the evolution of on-line curiosity, coverage views, and vote intentions earlier than and after the outset of every motion. Combining national-level occasion research with difference-in-differences designs exploiting variation in native protest depth, we discover that protests generate substantial web exercise however have restricted results on political attitudes. Aside from the Black Lives Matter protests following the dying of George Floyd, which shifted views on racial discrimination and elevated votes for the Democrats, we estimate exact null results of protests on public opinion and electoral habits.
That’s from a brand new NBER working paper by Amory Gethin and Vincent Pons.
