Acts of Dissent: New Developments in the Study of Protest

by Dieter Rucht, Ruud Koopmans, Friedhelm Niedhardt, Mark R. Beissinger (Contribution by), Louis J. Crishock (Contribution by)

Overview

Although living conditions have improved throughout history, protest, at least in the last few decades, seems to have increased to the point of becoming a normal phenomenon in modern societies. Contributors to this volume examine how and why this is the case and argue that although problems such as poverty, hunger, and violations of democratic rights may have been reduced in advanced Western societies, a variety of other problems and opportunities have emerged and multiplied the reasons and possibilities for protest. Acts of Dissent: New Developments in the Study of Protest examines some of those problems, progressing from methodological issues, to discussions of the part that the mass media plays in protest, finally to several case studies of protests in different contexts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847698561
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/03/1999
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Dieter Rucht, Ruud Koopmans, and Friedholm Neidhardt are members of the Research Unit 'Social Movements and the Public Sphere' at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Berlin, Germany.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Protest as a Subject of Empirical Research
Part 2 Methodological Issues
Chapter 3 Studying Contentious Politics: From Event-ful History to Cycles of Collective Action
Chapter 4 Methodological Issues in Collecting Protest Event Data: Units of Analysis, Sources and Sampling, Coding Problems
Chapter 5 The Use of Protest Event Data in Comparative Research: Cross-National Comparability, Sampling Methods and Robustness
Part 6 Protest and the Mass Media
Chapter 7 Electronic and Print Media Representations of Washington, DC Demonstrations, 1982 and 1991: A Demography of Description Bias
Chapter 8 Determining Selection Bias in Local and National Newspaper Reports on Protest Events
Chapter 9 Unpacking Protest Events: A Description Bias Analysis of Media Records with Systematic Direct Observations of Collective Action-The 1995 March for Life on Washington, DC
Part 10 Applications: Protest in Different Contexts
Chapter 11 “Plus ça change, moins ça change.” Demonstrations in France During the Nineteen-Eighties
Chapter 12 Radical Protest in Switzerland
Chapter 13 Comparative Event Analysis: Black Civil Rights Protest in South Africa and the United States
Chapter 14 Event Analysis in Transitional Societies: Protest Mobilization in the Former Soviet Union
Chapter 15 Protest Event Analysis in the Study of Democratic Consolidation: Poland, 1989-1993

Editorial Reviews

A useful volume on methods for analyzing protest events, chiefly but not exclusively treating the question of data sources, especially commercial mass media.

Mobilization

This edited volume makes a useful addition to the literature on protest.

Political Studies Review

Acts of Dissent is a timely review of methodological questions, with intriguing applications to protests in states ranging from the former Soviet Union to South Africa.. .. The organizers/editors of the volume. .. have successfully invigorated international scholarly networks. .. the diversity of applications has called forth a variety of solutions.

Contemporary Sociology