Produced by George Perry

Caught in the Act of Protest Results

Time to Act on Climate Change

London, 7th March 2015

About the project:

‘Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualising Contestation’ is a European project which aims

to find answers to the questions of who participates in protest, for what reasons, and how

they are mobilised. It is the first project of its kind, attempting to systematically survey

street protests across Europe. This set of data was collected as part of a University of Exeter

module POC204F: The Politics of Protest, a hands-on course that teaches students theories

of protest to then test them using data they have collected themselves on a protest field

trip, delivered by Dr. Clare Saunders. For further information about the project, please see

the project website at www.protestsurvey.eu.

About the survey:

296 participants in the London ‘Time to Act on Climate Change’ March returned a complet-

ed survey to us. In this summary we explore respondents’:

1. Empathy with protest goals and suggested solutions to the problem

2. Biographical characteristics

3. Motivations and sources of information

4. Organisational membership

Photograph from

the March (http://

www.campaigncc.or

g/TimetoAct)

Produced by George Perry

What should be done to address climate change?

Tagul.com word cloud of the words used most

frequently in respondents’ responses

The people on the protest:

In terms of employment there were high numbers

of full-time employed people 35%, retired respondents

made up 21%, part-time 14%, self-employed 21%,

unemployed 5% and studying only 6%.

Mostly highly qualified, 40% working towards or having

attained an Undergraduate Degree and 43% having

studied at a Postgraduate level (including Masters

and PhD)

When it comes to gender, 53% of the participants

label themselves as a women and 47% as a man.

The respondents reported a range of different lev-

els of experience of demonstrations, with 25% hav-

ing attended 21 or more demonstrations in the

past, 14% having attended 11 to 20, 23% having

attended 6 to 10 demonstrations, 29% having

attended 1 to 5 demonstrations, and 3% having never attended a demo before. There were

high levels of political participation outside of demonstrations in the last 12 months, 92%

had signed a petition, 90% had deliberately bought products for political, ethical or environ-

mental reasons and 83% had boycotted certain products. Lower participation in more direct

forms of protest, 16% had taken direct action and 13% had participated in a strike.

Protest goals and suggested solutions:

Protest goal 1: World leaders must agree to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions

There was huge support for the importance of this goal 94% thought it was ‘very much’ im-

portant. However, the respondents were quite cynical, only 17% thought the demo was ‘quite’

or ‘very much effective’ at addressing this goal.

Protest goal 2: To grow and celebrate the diverse movement against climate change

This goal had less support , with only 50% believing it to be ‘quite’ or ‘very much’ important.

However, the respondents had much more belief in effectiveness, 60% thought the demo was

‘quite’ or ‘very much effective’ at addressing this goal.

Produced by George Perry

Motivation and mobilisation:

Almost all of the motivational factors were very common amongst the respondents, the most

common were to 'raise public awareness', 'pressure politicians to make things change', 'express

my views' and 'express my solidarity' (94%, 94%, 92% and 91% of respondents agreed with these,

respectively). There was a particularly high sense of moral obligation, 77% felt 'morally obliged' to

participate. However, only 40% agreed that they were motivated to attend to ‘defend my inter-

ests'.

The most important information channels for finding out about the protest were ‘Online social

networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter)’ and ‘an organization (magazine, meeting, website, mailing list,

…)’,both 22%. There was a high level on non-response to this question, 17% of respondents left

this question blank. The rest of the respondents were spread thinly across family, friends, other

media and fellow members of an organisation being the most significant with 13%.

Photograph from the march, including some of the various signs and banners present

https://www.flickr.com/photos/david0287/16127305743/in/photostream/

Memberships:

Quite significant sense of unity among respondents, 74% positively identified with the other re-

spondents. The sane can be said about identification with the staging organisations, 69% identi-

fied with any of them.

Participation and membership of organisations was quite high, with active or passive member-

ship of an environmental organisation being the most common (66% ), 45% for political parties,

38% for charity or welfare organisation and 33% for third world, global justice or peace organisa-

tion.

Produced by George Perry

Implications for protest organisers:

This data hints towards a severe cynicism within those participating in environmental

demonstrations, only 17% of the respondents thought the demo could have any positive

impact on world leaders and their approach to radically reducing greenhouse gas emis-

sions, similar data analysis could be done with other environmental demo data to support

this. However, the results did show there is a belief in the environmental movement and

the place that demonstrations have in it.

There was a large number of people (17%) who had not provided the most important infor-

mation channels for finding out about the protest were. I believe this could be due to a

multitude of channels of information that people were informed via, meaning the demo

was well advertised, a positive to take away from this data.

It is also interesting to note the generally high levels of political participation, with almost

all of the respondents having participated in a demo before and many political acts having

been carried out by over 90% of the respondents in the past 12 months.

This demonstration was oddly under-represented by young people, 18-25 being the small-

est group and 46-65 the largest . Another underrepresented group are students, only 6% of

respondents were currently studying. This demo seemed to lack pull factors for the young-

er generations which is worrying due to the impact this issue will have on them as an age

group. However, it is also promising as it shows high levels of engagement with this issue

from older generations which so far has been viewed to be lacking. The mechanisms and

channels used to inform and draw in the participants seem to fit those that would reach

young people and students, e.g. social media and other online based media forms. There

was also high levels of information gained through organisations , and organization’s maga-

zine, meeting, website, mailing list, etc was said to have informed 22% of the participants. Along-

side the high levels of organisation participation that young people displayed in the data shows a

conflicting mobilisation landscape. It has not been possible to determine from this data why

young people and students were not better represented at the demo.