PROTEST EVENT ANALYSIS MEETS AUTOCRACY: COMPARING THE COVERAGE OF CHINESE PROTESTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA, DISSIDENT WEBSITES, AND IN THE NEWS

Abstract

How accurate is media-elicited protest event data from autocracies where the state censors the media? Based on a source-specific model of event selection and a multisource dataset of over 3,100 protests from three Chinese megacities, we demonstrate the substantial advantages of using social media data, capturing 115 times more protests than English-language international news, 74 times more than domestic news, and 10 times more than dissident websites. Social media are most likely to cover small and nonviolent events that other sources often ignore. Aside from antiregime protests, they are less affected by censorship than often assumed. A validity test against public holidays and daily rainfall shows that social media data outperform dissident websites and traditional news. Social media, and to a lesser extent dissident media, are promising new sources for protest event analysis in autocracies. Scholars should treat news media-based event data from heavily censoring regimes with caution.