Mapping Protest on the Refugee Crisis: Insights from Online Protest Event Analysis

Abstract

In this chapter, we use a protest field approach to explore the main facets of the contentious dynamics triggered in three hotspots of the refugee crisis—Greece, Italy, and Spain. To this aim, we employ protest event analysis, a consolidated method to explore the relations between protest and the political environment. In comparison to traditional applications of this method, we make systematic use of Google News to retrieve news about protests on migration issues and to reconstruct the three protest fields. Results of our analysis suggest that the three countries did in fact provide different political opportunities for protest on migration issues to emerge side by side with solidarity initiatives and for different sets of actors to network and engage in these protests.