Understanding how social networks influence protest participation has been difficult. This study leverages unprecedented data from Twitter during the 2015 Charlie Hebdo protests in Paris.
We collected real-time Twitter activity alongside records of actual protest attendance, analyzing both online network structure and offline behavior.
The findings support theories that exposure to others' intentions through social ties drives participation. Protesters were found significantly more connected via direct, indirect, triadic, and reciprocated ties than non-protesters.
These results provide the first large-scale empirical evidence linking specific digital social networks to offline protest engagement.
| Social Networks and Protest Participation: Evidence from 130 Million Twitter Users was authored by Jennifer Larson, Jonathan Nagler, Jonathan Ronen and Joshua Tucker. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2019. |
