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Social Networks and Protest Participation: Evidence from 130 Million Twitter Users

Social Networks and Protest Participation: Evidence from 130 Million Twitter Users Pinning down the role of social ties in the decision to protest has been notoriously elusive, largely due to data limitations. Social media and their global use by protesters offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe real‐time social ties and online behavior, though often without an attendant measure of real‐world behavior. We collect data on Twitter activity during the 2015 Charlie Hebdo protest in Paris, which, unusually, record real‐world protest attendance and network structure measured beyond egocentric networks. We devise a test of social theories of protest that hold that participation depends on exposure to others' intentions and network position determines exposure. Our findings are strongly consistent with these theories, showing that protesters are significantly more connected to one another via direct, indirect, triadic, and reciprocated ties than comparable nonprotesters. These results offer the first large‐scale empirical support for the claim that social network structure has consequences for protest participation. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Political Science Wiley

Social Networks and Protest Participation: Evidence from 130 Million Twitter Users

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References (32)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2019 by the Midwest Political Science Association
ISSN
0092-5853
eISSN
1540-5907
DOI
10.1111/ajps.12436
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Pinning down the role of social ties in the decision to protest has been notoriously elusive, largely due to data limitations. Social media and their global use by protesters offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe real‐time social ties and online behavior, though often without an attendant measure of real‐world behavior. We collect data on Twitter activity during the 2015 Charlie Hebdo protest in Paris, which, unusually, record real‐world protest attendance and network structure measured beyond egocentric networks. We devise a test of social theories of protest that hold that participation depends on exposure to others' intentions and network position determines exposure. Our findings are strongly consistent with these theories, showing that protesters are significantly more connected to one another via direct, indirect, triadic, and reciprocated ties than comparable nonprotesters. These results offer the first large‐scale empirical support for the claim that social network structure has consequences for protest participation.

Journal

American Journal of Political Science – Wiley

Published: Jul 1, 2019

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