Expanding Protest Event Analysis through Videos

The increasing availability of digital video material has led to its widespread use in the social sciences, especially in processual and relational approaches. However, methodological reflection has lagged behind this development.

The roundtable participants will discuss the opportunities and challenges involved in combining text and video sources for studying protest in the digital age.

Specifically, they will discuss a proposal to extend classical protest event analysis through the use of videos of contentious events. This novel perspective of video-enhanced protest event analysis aims to expands two frontiers of protest event research. First, it can be used in an extractive way, contributing to source triangulation and increasing the validity of written sources through a kind of digital ethnography. Second, it can be used in a reconstructive way, expanding the range of information available with particular attention to features such as emotional atmosphere and collective framing, as well as processes and dynamics more generally.

Participants

Donatella della Porta, SNS Florence

Jennifer Earl, University of Delaware

Swen Hutter, WZB & Freie Universität Berlin

Stefan Malthaner, Hamburg Institute for Social Research

Antje Scharenberg, Universität St. Gallen

Data protection
The event will be recorded. The data protection notice on photo and film recordings can be found here.

Accessibility of the WZB
The venue is wheelchair accessible. Please let Friederike Theilen-Kosch (friederike.theilen-kosch [at] wzb.eu) know if you need special assistance.