Affiliation:
1. 2Donatella della Porta is a Professor of Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the Director of the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). Sophia Hunger is an Assistant Professor for Computational Social Science at the University of Bremen and Visiting Fellow at the WZB Social Science Center Berlin. Swen Hutter is the Director of the Center for Civil Society Research and a Lichtenberg Professor in Political Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Anna Lavizzari is a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at University Complutense of Madrid. Please direct correspondence to donatella.dellaporta@sns.it.
Abstract
The increasing availability of digital video material has led to its widespread use in the social sciences, especially in research adopting processual and relational approaches. However, methodological reflection has not developed at the same pace. In this article, we propose ways to extend classical protest event analysis using videos of contentious events. Our novel method, video-enhanced protest event analysis (vPEA), expands protest event research on two frontiers. First, researchers can use vPEA extractively, contributing to source triangulation and increasing the validity of written sources. Second, it can be used reconstructively, expanding the range of information available by capturing emotional atmosphere, choreography, and processes and dynamics more generally. The article provides a step-by-step guide through the vPEA process, which we illustrate using a secondary analysis of existing research and original material on Covid-related protests in Germany and Italy.