Protest now: A systems view of 21st century movements

Abstract

The 21st century has seen unprecedented levels of mass protest all over the world. Protest is a dynamic interplay of actions over time, across levels of society (e.g., individual, interpersonal, group, intergroup), and across domains (e.g., social, cultural, political, economic). To illustrate this systems view, we first describe the local and global ecology of protest as it operates in the world now. We rely mainly on macro-level social science research to describe the scale and scope of specific movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter) as well as temporal trends in protest across the world. Second, we offer an expansive conceptualization of the types of protest, and the consequences of protest, based on an integrative review of micro- and meso-level research in psychology, and macro-level research in social science. Third, we present a temporal social network analysis of the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement as an empirical example of a systems approach.