Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Do protests increase political engagement among the general public? It is often necessary for social movements to induce widespread political engagement \nin order to gain leverage over elected officials, but this consequence of protest activity has never been tested or verified. Indeed, empirical research \non the public effects of protests has largely been handicapped by methodological limitations. I designed a two-pronged experimental design that causally identifies the effects of protest exposure. The first stage uses a \nvignette experiment in Mexico to capture indirect exposure, and the second stage uses a field experiment to directly expose the same respondents to real \nstreet protests. All of the treatments for the vignette and field experiments piggyback off of the 2014-2015 protests against organized crime in Mexico. Through this two-pronged experiment, I find that the form of exposure is critical in identifying the engaging effects of protests. While the general public might become enthusiastic and engaged upon hearing news of mass \nmobilization, the same people tend to disengage when faced with an actual protest.
Author: Cassilde Schwartz
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: University of Pittsburgh
OpenAlex ID: W2430856273