Protests can direct attention toward an injustice, but some activist group tactics may turn people away rather than align them with the cause. A team of researchers at Penn State are launching a project to better understand how protests and other activist group approaches impact how people think about and act on various causes.
Co-principal investigator Sophia McClennen, professor of international affairs and comparative literature and director of The Center for Global Studies, studies activist groups that incorporate irony and humor and their impacts on other groups.
Separately, co-principal investigator Joe Wright, professor of political science, has spent most of his career studying dictatorships, how protests mobilize and how dictators respond.
Together, the pair will lead a team working collaboratively with institutions across Penn State to support research, teaching and programming focused on the study of activist groups and their impacts being funded in part by the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI).
The research team plans to utilize SSRI resources in a unique way and look beyond demographic research.
“As a social scientist, I develop theories and test theories. SSRI typically collects descriptive data, so our approach in this project will be very different,” Wright said.
McClennen will research how activist groups are perceived and the actions groups can take to influence that perception.
“From my previous work, often humorous or ironic approaches put attention on the issue and not the group,” McClennen said. “Different tactics can help onlookers perceive issues in a different way.”
McClennen noted that more serious approaches can achieve the same focus. In one recent protest in Kenya, young protestors were shown carrying and dropping empty coffins to mourn Kenyans who lost their lives during the ongoing anti-Finance Bill protests.
“By having a prop, it puts the attention on the prop and not the protestors blocking the street,” McClennen said.
The researchers will use also use SSRI seed funding to survey activist group members and the mass public and how they respond to different types of protest tactics, both from inside and outside the activist groups.
“Activists can have varying commitments to the cause, so we’ll survey each of those groups,” Wright said. “The information will be valuable for groups who want to champion for a cause, such as human-induced climate change, and how to impact people’s perceptions of the issue.”
The project will build upon their previous work, as outlined on their Tactics 4 Change website. The interactive site includes free access to information on more than 400 cases of nonviolent dilemma actions from over 100 countries. The dataset offers opportunities for further learning for activists, students and scholars.
In the future, the team said they would like to expand the project internationally.
Other members of the research team at Penn State are Reginald Adams, professor of psychology, and Janet Swim, professor of psychology. Additionally, Srdja Popovic, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies in Serbia; Steve Duncombe, professor at the Gallatin School and the Department of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University; and Prateekshit Pandey, assistant professor of communications, University of California, Santa Barbara, are also contributing to the project.
Greenpeace International is providing additional support.