Conflicts over social participation
Consensus and Conflict Department
Project head: Prof. Dr. Sabrina Zajak
Project coordination: Dr. Elias Steinhilper
Project team members: Dr. Moritz Sommer
Conflicts over social participation are an integral part of democratic, plural communities. Despite their importance for social cohesion, they have not yet been systematically empirically studied. This is especially true for the local context. This is where the research project came in. Three central dimensions of protest in the local context were investigated:
- The quantitative development of protest over time,
- the networking of protest organisers and
- the subjective perceptions and demands of the actors involved.
The project relied on a range of quantitative and qualitative methods as well as a combination of media analysis (protest event analysis), network analysis based on digital data and guided interviews with protest organisers. The pilot project examined exemplary conflicts about social participation in the period between 2014 and 2018 in two medium-sized German cities (20,000-100,000 inhabitants).
Results: In both cities studied - Plauen and Neuruppin - migration-related protests peaked around 2015/2016. Mobilisation took place online and offline. Strong local differences emerged, for example in the importance of right-wing "movement parties". The results were prepared in several publications and discussed in public events. The protest event analysis will be extended to other cities.
Publications:
Sommer, Moritz; Steinhilper, Elias; Zajak, Sabrina (2021): Codebook DeZIM "Lokale Protestereignisanalyse"
Funding: Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Institutional funding)
Cooperation partner:
Dr. Matthias Hoffmann (Weizenbaum Institute / Free University Berlin); Katarina Stjepandić (BIM / HU Berlin)