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Violence on Many Sides: Framing Effects on Protest and Support for Repression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Pearce Edwards Open the ORCID record for Pearce Edwards [Opens in a new window]  and
Daniel Arnon Open the ORCID record for Daniel Arnon [Opens in a new window]
Pearce Edwards*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Emory University, Georgia, USA
Daniel Arnon
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Emory University, Georgia, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The success of protests depends on whether they favorably affect public opinion: nonviolent resistance can win public support for a movement, but regimes counter by framing protest as violent and instigated by outsiders. The authors argue that public perceptions of whether a protest is violent shift based on the framing of the types of action and the identities of participants in those actions. The article distinguishes between three dimensions: (1) threat of harm, (2) bearing of arms and (3) identity of protesters. Using survey experiments in Israel and the United States, the study finds support for framing effects. Threat of harm has the largest positive effect on perceptions of violence and support for repression. Surprisingly, social out-groups are not perceived as more violent, but respondents favor repressing them anyway. Support for repressing a nonthreatening out-group is at least as large as support for repressing a threatening in-group. The findings link contentious action and public opinion, and demonstrate the susceptibility of this link to framing.

Keywords

protestnonviolent resistancepolitical violencecontentious politicsrepression of dissentidentityexperimental methodsheterogeneous treatment effects
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 488 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Edwards and Arnon Dataset

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