IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/19355.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Lifecycle of Protests in the Digital Age

Author

Listed:
  • Boyer, Pierre
  • Gauthier, Germain
  • Le Yaouanq, Yves
  • Rollet, Vincent
  • Schmutz, Benoit

Abstract

We propose a theory of protest dynamics with heterogeneous protest technology and intensity. The ability to mobilize online reduces the likelihood of coordination failures at both the extensive (engagement) and intensive (violence) margins. Social media can initially help launch massive protests, but then encourage radical factions to turn violent and drive out moderates. Using both online and offline data, we show that the 2018 Yellow Vest uprising in France followed such a crowd-in-then-crowd-out sequence: early online and offline mobilizations reinforced each other, but online discussions quickly radicalized, moderates left, and a handful of violent protesters took over the streets.

Suggested Citation

  • Boyer, Pierre & Gauthier, Germain & Le Yaouanq, Yves & Rollet, Vincent & Schmutz, Benoit, 2024. "The Lifecycle of Protests in the Digital Age," CEPR Discussion Papers 19355, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19355
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP19355
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peterson, Andrew & Spirling, Arthur, 2018. "Classification Accuracy as a Substantive Quantity of Interest: Measuring Polarization in Westminster Systems," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(1), pages 120-128, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sardoschau, Sulin & Casanueva-Artís, Annalí, 2025. "The Cost of Tolerating Intolerance: Right-Wing Protest and Hate Crimes," IZA Discussion Papers 17763, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Born, Andreas & Janssen, Aljoscha, 2020. "Does a District-Vote Matter for the Behavior of Politicians? A Textual Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches," Working Paper Series 1320, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    2. Gloria Gennaro & Elliott Ash, 2022. "Emotion and Reason in Political Language," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(643), pages 1037-1059.
    3. Philine Widmer & Cl'ementine Abed Meraim & Sergio Galletta & Elliott Ash, 2022. "Media Slant is Contagious," Papers 2202.07269, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.
    4. Salla Simola & Jeremias Nieminen & Janne Tukiainen, 2023. "A century of partisanship in Finnish political speech," Discussion Papers 160, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    5. Rivas, Javier & Rockey, James, 2021. "Expressive voting with booing and cheering: Evidence from Britain," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    6. Born, Andreas & Janssen, Aljoscha, 2022. "Does a district mandate matter for the behavior of politicians? An analysis of roll-call votes and parliamentary speeches," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    7. Jeremias Nieminen & Salla Simola & Janne Tukiainen, 2023. "Political representation and the evolution of group differences within parties: Evidence from 110 years of parliamentary speech," Discussion Papers 161, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    8. Jon H. Fiva & Oda Nedregård & Henning Øien, 2021. "Polarization in Parliamentary Speech," CESifo Working Paper Series 8818, CESifo.
    9. Miklos Sebők & Zoltán Kacsuk & Ákos Máté, 2022. "The (real) need for a human touch: testing a human–machine hybrid topic classification workflow on a New York Times corpus," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3621-3643, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Protests; Crowding-out; Violence; Social media;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19355. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.