Micromobilization networks at demonstrations

Protests are a collective endeavor. Those who take to the streets necessarily do this not alone, but together with (many) others. However, those who demonstrate do not simply do so together with everyone else who is also taking part in the same demonstration. Instead, the decision to go to a demonstration is often influenced by specific others or even made together with them. People often go to a demonstration together with friends, acquaintances, colleagues or family members, i.e. with people to whom a more or less close social bond already exists before the demonstration. A person’s social networks thus play a decisive role in mobilizing protest participants. The existing literature widely acknowledges the importance of personal contacts for political mobilization, but so far data on mobilizing networks has only been gathered in few studies and in these studies protest participants usually only were asked to indicate which persons or organizations had played a role in their decision to participate in the respective protest. Studies were thus able to observe the effects of networks on protest participation, but the actual mobilization process and the structure of the mobilizing networks remained opaque. In an international survey of participants of the Fridays for Future demonstrations in March, September and November 2019 in nine European countries, we now, for the first time, included a set of network questions that allow us to observe also the mobilizing activity of protest participants. By asking protesters about the scope and the success of their own attempts to mobilize others to participate in the protests, we are able to analyze not only the effect of mobilizing networks (reported mobilization channels) but to investigate in more detail the structure of these mobilizing networks and function they play in political mobilizations (reported mobilization efforts and their success). The paper draws on data from these surveys in order to identify distinct types of micro-mobilizers.