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Project

Boy, that escalated quickly: protest and the contagious nature of scope expansion.

Expanding the scope of conflict—that is, triggering reactions of significant others in the public sphere—is a key outcome of protest. This project scrutinizes how (early) reactions drive the extent to which other actors are compelled to react to protest. As such, it investigates the contagious nature of scope expansion. Scope expansion is argued to be, in part, a function of itself: early reactions to protest compel other actors to engage, pushing the debate forward. The starting point of the analysis is that early reactions overcome a sort of reaction "threshold", affecting other actor's propensity to react. Reactions breed other reactions—similar to success-breeds-success dynamics—and hence have a cascading effect. To test this process, reaction "chains" will be dissected. Features of early reactions or early reaction patterns will be modelled to see whether they can predict later reactions or reaction patterns. For instance, consensus in early reactions is expected to seriously constrain the scope of conflict. If all actors agree, then it is unlikely that the issue warrants further attention and interest quickly disappears. Alternatively, early decisionmaker reactions might fuel debate, as other actors sense that there is an opening in the political system they can exploit. And, the engagement of a particular party actor might draw an ideologically close party in the debate, as both actors struggle for issue-ownership and seek to appeal to a similar constituency. Theoretically, party competition, agenda-setting, news value and protest impact theories are combined to put forward hypotheses about the contagious nature of scope expansion. Empirically, mass and social media content analysis are used to construct protest event and scope of conflict data in Belgium, spanning a 20 year period (2000-2020). Methodologically, time series analyses will be used to dissect reaction chains.
Date:1 May 2020 →  30 Apr 2022
Keywords:POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY
Disciplines:Social movements and collective action, Political communication