Protests and Radicalization in the Digital Age : The Reopen Movement (Elements in Contentious Politics)

Menchik, Jeremy/ Bazzi, Samuel/ Martiny, Clara

Cambridge University Press（2026/04発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 75 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781009768757

Full Description

This Element provides the first large-scale inquiry into the 'Reopen' protest movement against COVID-19 public health shutdowns. We synthesize digital ethnography inside the movement with text analyses of an original data set spanning more than 1.8 million Facebook comments and posts from over 224,000 online activists. We characterize the movement's origin, growth, and evolution as it interacted with public policies and offline protests. We explain individual- and group-level dynamics of radicalization over time, across topics, and, paradoxically, in response to content moderation. We extend existing theories of contentious politics to suggest that movements that fail to maintain their connection to offline organizations are especially prone to mutability, radicalization, and exhaustion. Together, our findings offer a powerful theoretical framework for understanding social movements in the digital age, while updating and extending classical social movement theory.

Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Cycles of contention, the tea party, and the reopen movement; 3. Methods and data; 4. The reopen movement: cycles of contention in the digital age; 5. Conclusion; References.