Pub Date : 2024-04-18DOI: 10.1177/02633957241245897
Hugo Drochon
Forty years on, Theda Skocpol’s account of the French Revolution remains remarkably robust. But how are we to think about political change today? Since Louis XVI walked up to the guillotine, we have been used to thinking of a left/right opposition driving political change, but this was not the only division at the time, nor indeed since: during the Terror, Robespierre was supported by the Montagnards, the deputies who sat on the highest benches of the Assembly, while the opposition was located at the bottom, in the Marais or the Plain. Like during la Terreur, today’s politics, from France to the United States, appears more to oppose a centre to an extreme, and this prism allows us to track Skocpol’s own evolution since 1979, from periphery to centre.
{"title":"Left or centre? Theda Skocpol’s States and Social Revolutions from the French Revolution to today","authors":"Hugo Drochon","doi":"10.1177/02633957241245897","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241245897","url":null,"abstract":"Forty years on, Theda Skocpol’s account of the French Revolution remains remarkably robust. But how are we to think about political change today? Since Louis XVI walked up to the guillotine, we have been used to thinking of a left/right opposition driving political change, but this was not the only division at the time, nor indeed since: during the Terror, Robespierre was supported by the Montagnards, the deputies who sat on the highest benches of the Assembly, while the opposition was located at the bottom, in the Marais or the Plain. Like during la Terreur, today’s politics, from France to the United States, appears more to oppose a centre to an extreme, and this prism allows us to track Skocpol’s own evolution since 1979, from periphery to centre.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140630682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1177/02633957241236404
Ruairidh J Brown
This article gives autoethnographic sketch of teaching International Relations in Mainland China. Attention is given to the issue of ‘sensitivity’, a phenomenon typically associated with Chinese State censorship. The article will however argue that sensitivity is much more complex than a top-down State prohibition on certain topics, arguing instead that it is an opaque and continually in flux phenomenon produced by multiple actors within society. The article will further argue that the surest means of navigating this phenomenon for an academic is to listen to students and use insights gained from them as a means of navigating sensitivity. These insights can provide both further knowledge of how sensitivities are constructed as well as how to safely discuss them – an awareness that can serve as inspiration for critical discussions on political issues. In completing this sketch, the article fills the notable gap in pedagogical literature on Higher Education in China concerning both politics as a challenge to teaching in mainland China, most studies almost exclusively concerning themselves with the challenges posed by cultural Confucianism, and as content, previous studies being almost completely contained within disciplines such as Business Management and Foreign Languages.
{"title":"Floating on uncertain waters: navigating ‘sensitivity’ while teaching politics and international relations in Mainland China","authors":"Ruairidh J Brown","doi":"10.1177/02633957241236404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241236404","url":null,"abstract":"This article gives autoethnographic sketch of teaching International Relations in Mainland China. Attention is given to the issue of ‘sensitivity’, a phenomenon typically associated with Chinese State censorship. The article will however argue that sensitivity is much more complex than a top-down State prohibition on certain topics, arguing instead that it is an opaque and continually in flux phenomenon produced by multiple actors within society. The article will further argue that the surest means of navigating this phenomenon for an academic is to listen to students and use insights gained from them as a means of navigating sensitivity. These insights can provide both further knowledge of how sensitivities are constructed as well as how to safely discuss them – an awareness that can serve as inspiration for critical discussions on political issues. In completing this sketch, the article fills the notable gap in pedagogical literature on Higher Education in China concerning both politics as a challenge to teaching in mainland China, most studies almost exclusively concerning themselves with the challenges posed by cultural Confucianism, and as content, previous studies being almost completely contained within disciplines such as Business Management and Foreign Languages.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140254465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-27DOI: 10.1177/02633957241229375
Liam Clegg, Graeme AM Davies
Are grant flows from the Westminster government to local authorities influenced by political dynamics, and if so do these politicised transfers influence local election outcomes? John and Ward suggested that, through the 1980s and 1990s, Conservative central governments favoured politically aligned local authorities. We demonstrate the continuation of this trend across the cohort of Labour, coalition, and Conservative governments from 2007 to 2019, and also establish evidence of inter-party variation in the type of grant manipulation in existence. We also more substantively extend John and Ward’s work by demonstrating that electoral ‘ill-gotten gains’ follow from these politicised flows, with higher resource transfers being associated with marginally stronger incumbent electoral performance. Given the importance of central grants to subnational government in the UK, these findings are of significant contemporary policy relevance.
{"title":"Ill-gotten gains: Partisan alignment, politicised grant transfers and English local election outcomes","authors":"Liam Clegg, Graeme AM Davies","doi":"10.1177/02633957241229375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241229375","url":null,"abstract":"Are grant flows from the Westminster government to local authorities influenced by political dynamics, and if so do these politicised transfers influence local election outcomes? John and Ward suggested that, through the 1980s and 1990s, Conservative central governments favoured politically aligned local authorities. We demonstrate the continuation of this trend across the cohort of Labour, coalition, and Conservative governments from 2007 to 2019, and also establish evidence of inter-party variation in the type of grant manipulation in existence. We also more substantively extend John and Ward’s work by demonstrating that electoral ‘ill-gotten gains’ follow from these politicised flows, with higher resource transfers being associated with marginally stronger incumbent electoral performance. Given the importance of central grants to subnational government in the UK, these findings are of significant contemporary policy relevance.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140025103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-22DOI: 10.1177/02633957241231803
Sergiu Gherghina, Bettina Mitru
Populist parties place the people at the centre of polity and politics. Such parties refer to direct democracy as a suitable avenue to involve people in the decision-making process but much less is known about their approaches towards deliberation. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature and analyses how populist parties talk about deliberation in their election manifestos. It tests empirically how much they speak about deliberation and whether they have a generic discourse as opposed to specific references to forms of deliberation and levels of implementation. Our qualitative content analysis draws on the election manifestos of 84 political parties from the Manifesto Project Dataset in 23 European democracies in the national elections between 1996 and 2021. The results indicate that populists talk considerably less and use vague language about the levels of implementation compared to non-populists.
{"title":"Too little, too vague: How populist parties talk about deliberation in Europe","authors":"Sergiu Gherghina, Bettina Mitru","doi":"10.1177/02633957241231803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241231803","url":null,"abstract":"Populist parties place the people at the centre of polity and politics. Such parties refer to direct democracy as a suitable avenue to involve people in the decision-making process but much less is known about their approaches towards deliberation. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature and analyses how populist parties talk about deliberation in their election manifestos. It tests empirically how much they speak about deliberation and whether they have a generic discourse as opposed to specific references to forms of deliberation and levels of implementation. Our qualitative content analysis draws on the election manifestos of 84 political parties from the Manifesto Project Dataset in 23 European democracies in the national elections between 1996 and 2021. The results indicate that populists talk considerably less and use vague language about the levels of implementation compared to non-populists.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139954531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-19DOI: 10.1177/02633957241229377
Stephan Scheel, Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Nicholas De Genova
The introduction to the special issue (SI) lays out the agenda and key concepts of the SI ‘COVID Capitalism: The Contested Logistics of Migrant Labour Supply Chains in the Double Crisis’. The contributions to the SI focus on the reconfiguration of the means and methods of the exploitation of migrant labour during the COVID-19 pandemic and the related reorganisation of contemporary border and migration regimes. They all focus, more or less explicitly, on the adaptation and reorganisation of migrant labour supply chains which were disrupted through the ‘double crisis’ of public health and existing border and mobility regimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this way, the SI seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of COVID-capitalism, understood as a form of disaster capitalism, in which fractions of capital try to turn the multiple crises implicated by the pandemic into a source of profit. If and how they succeed with these endeavours is, however, not guaranteed from the outset but an empirical question. The study of migrant labour supply chains does thus not only help to develop a more nuanced understanding of disaster capitalism but also contributes to debates on the logistification of migration management.
{"title":"COVID capitalism: The contested logistics of migrant labour supply chains in the double crisis","authors":"Stephan Scheel, Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Nicholas De Genova","doi":"10.1177/02633957241229377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241229377","url":null,"abstract":"The introduction to the special issue (SI) lays out the agenda and key concepts of the SI ‘COVID Capitalism: The Contested Logistics of Migrant Labour Supply Chains in the Double Crisis’. The contributions to the SI focus on the reconfiguration of the means and methods of the exploitation of migrant labour during the COVID-19 pandemic and the related reorganisation of contemporary border and migration regimes. They all focus, more or less explicitly, on the adaptation and reorganisation of migrant labour supply chains which were disrupted through the ‘double crisis’ of public health and existing border and mobility regimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this way, the SI seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of COVID-capitalism, understood as a form of disaster capitalism, in which fractions of capital try to turn the multiple crises implicated by the pandemic into a source of profit. If and how they succeed with these endeavours is, however, not guaranteed from the outset but an empirical question. The study of migrant labour supply chains does thus not only help to develop a more nuanced understanding of disaster capitalism but also contributes to debates on the logistification of migration management.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139954721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-09DOI: 10.1177/02633957231207387
Jonathan Grix, Adam Dinsmore, Paul Michael Brannagan
The concept of ‘sportswashing’ serves as a short-hand way of criticising non-democratic regimes for using investment in sport, sports clubs, and sports events to detract from illiberal practices in their home countries. This article makes a contribution to the extant literature and debates on ‘sportswashing’ in three key ways by (1) showing that, paradoxically, without the encouragement and opportunities afforded by notionally democratic global capitalism and the ‘West’, ‘sportswashing’ strategies would not be available to non-democratic regimes; (2) highlighting the ‘mechanisms’ by which ‘sportswashing’ actually occurs and how it ought to be understood as an initial step on a long-term journey towards ‘soft power’ gains. The article does this by (3) examining two empirical examples of ‘sportswashing’: first, the 2022 Qatar World Cup and the broader international sports investment strategies pursued by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Second, we introduce the WWE partnership with Saudi Arabia to demonstrate that ‘sports washing’ can be rendered bidirectional such that both participants reap a reputational boost, inverting the presumed reputational damage that otherwise constitutes the main disincentive to participation by Western capital. Such a process embeds non-democratic regimes in the sports industry leading to their becoming ‘normalised’ in international business.
{"title":"Unpacking the politics of ‘sportswashing’: It takes two to tango","authors":"Jonathan Grix, Adam Dinsmore, Paul Michael Brannagan","doi":"10.1177/02633957231207387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231207387","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of ‘sportswashing’ serves as a short-hand way of criticising non-democratic regimes for using investment in sport, sports clubs, and sports events to detract from illiberal practices in their home countries. This article makes a contribution to the extant literature and debates on ‘sportswashing’ in three key ways by (1) showing that, paradoxically, without the encouragement and opportunities afforded by notionally democratic global capitalism and the ‘West’, ‘sportswashing’ strategies would not be available to non-democratic regimes; (2) highlighting the ‘mechanisms’ by which ‘sportswashing’ actually occurs and how it ought to be understood as an initial step on a long-term journey towards ‘soft power’ gains. The article does this by (3) examining two empirical examples of ‘sportswashing’: first, the 2022 Qatar World Cup and the broader international sports investment strategies pursued by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Second, we introduce the WWE partnership with Saudi Arabia to demonstrate that ‘sports washing’ can be rendered bidirectional such that both participants reap a reputational boost, inverting the presumed reputational damage that otherwise constitutes the main disincentive to participation by Western capital. Such a process embeds non-democratic regimes in the sports industry leading to their becoming ‘normalised’ in international business.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135286421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-31DOI: 10.1177/02633957231195456
Bruno Schmidt-Feuerheerd
Does ideology prevent social movements from resorting to violence? Structuralist, organisational, or political economy theories are widely agnostic on the relationship between ideology and the use of violence. In contrast, this article argues that founding ideologies indirectly shape social movements’ long-run decisions regarding the use violence, primarily by influencing the kind of individuals who join the movement to begin with. A path dependency develops as new members reinforce the initial ideology, as individuals who might tip the ideological-organisational equilibrium towards utilising new tactics join other organisations instead. Over time, ideology morphes from being initially an endogenous factor into an exogenous constraint how the group can behave. The article compares the mainstream Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya (IG) and the Jihad Organisation (JO), studying individual biographies, the groups’ recruitment patterns and their corresponding ideologies. The article thereby explains why the MB, with some minor exceptions, remained committed to non-violent activism, in contrast with the JO that resorted to violent means only and the IG that applied both violent and non-violent means. In the conclusion, the article addresses cases in Algeria and Madagascar to indicate the relevance of this argument beyond Egyptian Islamist movements to future comparative work.
{"title":"Ideology, organisation, and path dependency: The use of violence among Egyptian Islamist movements","authors":"Bruno Schmidt-Feuerheerd","doi":"10.1177/02633957231195456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231195456","url":null,"abstract":"Does ideology prevent social movements from resorting to violence? Structuralist, organisational, or political economy theories are widely agnostic on the relationship between ideology and the use of violence. In contrast, this article argues that founding ideologies indirectly shape social movements’ long-run decisions regarding the use violence, primarily by influencing the kind of individuals who join the movement to begin with. A path dependency develops as new members reinforce the initial ideology, as individuals who might tip the ideological-organisational equilibrium towards utilising new tactics join other organisations instead. Over time, ideology morphes from being initially an endogenous factor into an exogenous constraint how the group can behave. The article compares the mainstream Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya (IG) and the Jihad Organisation (JO), studying individual biographies, the groups’ recruitment patterns and their corresponding ideologies. The article thereby explains why the MB, with some minor exceptions, remained committed to non-violent activism, in contrast with the JO that resorted to violent means only and the IG that applied both violent and non-violent means. In the conclusion, the article addresses cases in Algeria and Madagascar to indicate the relevance of this argument beyond Egyptian Islamist movements to future comparative work.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42132631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-07DOI: 10.1177/02633957231191445
Sema Akboga, O. Şahin, E. Arik
As the primary means of political organisation, political parties remain vital to contemporary democracies, making it important to investigate their understanding of democracy. This study explores the themes with which five largest political parties in Turkey associate democracy. We studied tweets posted by official accounts of these parties’ headquarters and branches, as well as by other Twitter accounts that are institutionally linked to these parties. We found significant differences between the government bloc and the opposition bloc as well as between People Alliance and Nation Alliance in terms of the themes with which they associate democracy. The government bloc and People Alliance use themes such as national will and military coups while referring to democracy. The opposition bloc and Nation Alliance emphasise themes such as equality, freedom of the press, and justice. We conclude that parties’ and blocs’ different attitudes towards democracy are indicators of political polarisation in Turkey.
{"title":"Polarisation over the meaning of democracy: The case of political parties in Turkey","authors":"Sema Akboga, O. Şahin, E. Arik","doi":"10.1177/02633957231191445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231191445","url":null,"abstract":"As the primary means of political organisation, political parties remain vital to contemporary democracies, making it important to investigate their understanding of democracy. This study explores the themes with which five largest political parties in Turkey associate democracy. We studied tweets posted by official accounts of these parties’ headquarters and branches, as well as by other Twitter accounts that are institutionally linked to these parties. We found significant differences between the government bloc and the opposition bloc as well as between People Alliance and Nation Alliance in terms of the themes with which they associate democracy. The government bloc and People Alliance use themes such as national will and military coups while referring to democracy. The opposition bloc and Nation Alliance emphasise themes such as equality, freedom of the press, and justice. We conclude that parties’ and blocs’ different attitudes towards democracy are indicators of political polarisation in Turkey.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46530078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/02633957231186384
Siim Trumm, Caitlin Milazzo, Alan Duggan
The 2019 General Election brought about a significant change in the parliamentary balance of power. There has already been much attention devoted to how parties and their leaders campaigned in the run up to the polling day. Using original leaflet data from the OpenElections project, this study extends the focus to individual candidates by exploring the nature of local campaign communications. We find that candidates make little effort to promote their personal traits, with personalisation of leaflets remaining largely limited to offering visual cues in the shape of candidate photos. We also find that while negative campaign messages are common, they tend to relate to an opposing party more generally. Similarly, we find that highlighting the tactical situation in the constituency remains a rare practice. Our findings suggest that there is still considerable room for candidates to tailor their campaign materials to their personal attributes and the local electoral context.
{"title":"Parliamentary candidates and their campaign messages at the 2019 General Election","authors":"Siim Trumm, Caitlin Milazzo, Alan Duggan","doi":"10.1177/02633957231186384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231186384","url":null,"abstract":"The 2019 General Election brought about a significant change in the parliamentary balance of power. There has already been much attention devoted to how parties and their leaders campaigned in the run up to the polling day. Using original leaflet data from the OpenElections project, this study extends the focus to individual candidates by exploring the nature of local campaign communications. We find that candidates make little effort to promote their personal traits, with personalisation of leaflets remaining largely limited to offering visual cues in the shape of candidate photos. We also find that while negative campaign messages are common, they tend to relate to an opposing party more generally. Similarly, we find that highlighting the tactical situation in the constituency remains a rare practice. Our findings suggest that there is still considerable room for candidates to tailor their campaign materials to their personal attributes and the local electoral context.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41613312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-22DOI: 10.1177/02633957231185225
Caterina Froio, Xavier Romero‐Vidal
This article takes the Yellow Vests (YVs, Gilets Jaunes) movement as a case in point to study the mechanisms by which social media can enhance protest participation. Building on the literature on social media and protest behaviour, we study the association between different political experiences on social media and protest engagement. We rely on novel survey data from the project YELLOWPOL collected in France in 2019 during a period characterised by the mobilisation of the YVs. We find that individuals’ experiences on social media play a role in connecting general social media use with their participation in protests. Specifically, we show that simply using social media cannot predict protest behaviour, but seeking content from the accounts of decision-makers and activists and using social media to express opinions contributes to protest participation. These findings enhance the understanding of the individual-level mechanisms linking social media use and protest behaviour in first-wave democracies, expanding existing knowledge on the use and consequences of Internet-mediated technology on political participation and political change.
{"title":"From the screens to the streets? Social media use and participation in the Yellow Vests protests","authors":"Caterina Froio, Xavier Romero‐Vidal","doi":"10.1177/02633957231185225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231185225","url":null,"abstract":"This article takes the Yellow Vests (YVs, Gilets Jaunes) movement as a case in point to study the mechanisms by which social media can enhance protest participation. Building on the literature on social media and protest behaviour, we study the association between different political experiences on social media and protest engagement. We rely on novel survey data from the project YELLOWPOL collected in France in 2019 during a period characterised by the mobilisation of the YVs. We find that individuals’ experiences on social media play a role in connecting general social media use with their participation in protests. Specifically, we show that simply using social media cannot predict protest behaviour, but seeking content from the accounts of decision-makers and activists and using social media to express opinions contributes to protest participation. These findings enhance the understanding of the individual-level mechanisms linking social media use and protest behaviour in first-wave democracies, expanding existing knowledge on the use and consequences of Internet-mediated technology on political participation and political change.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49465213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}