Essays on Protest Mobilization in Authoritarian Regimes

267 Pages·2016·1.37 MB·English

UC San Diego
UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Essays on Protest Mobilization in Authoritarian Regimes
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6f44z6nm
Author
Steinert-Threlkeld, Zachary
Publication Date
2016

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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University of California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Essays on Protest Mobilization in Authoritarian Regimes
A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Political Science
by
Zachary Caleb Steinert-Threlkeld
Committee in charge:
Professor Emile M. Hafner-Burton, Chair
Professor James H. Fowler, Co-Chair
Professor J. Lawrence Broz
Professor David A. Lake
Professor Barbara F. Walter
2016
Copyright
Zachary Caleb Steinert-Threlkeld, 2016
All rights reserved.
The Dissertation of Zachary Caleb Steinert-Threlkeld is
approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for
publication on microfilm and electronically:
Co-Chair
Chair
University of California, San Diego
2016
iii
DEDICATION
To my parents, Kayte and Tom.
iv
EPIGRAPH
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
— Henry David Thoreau
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Signature Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
Epigraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Vita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
Abstract of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Chapter 1 Spontaneous Collective Action: Peripheral Mobilization During
the Arab Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.1 Scope Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.4 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.5 Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.5.1 Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.5.2 Core Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.6 Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.7 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1.7.1 Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1.8 Exogenous Identification of the Core in Egypt . . . . . . . 49
1.9 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
1.10 Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
1.10.1 Twitter Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
1.10.2 Construction of Coordination Measure . . . . . . . 58
1.10.3 Alternate Measures of Elites . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
1.10.4 Exploring Upper Tail of Core Distribution . . . . . 67
1.10.5 Potential Model Misspecification . . . . . . . . . . . 73
1.10.6 Placebo Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
1.10.7 Events Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
vi
1.10.8 Deeper Analysis of Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, and
Qatar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
1.10.9 Shared and Unique Words for Hashtags . . . . . . . 94
1.10.10Topic Model Detail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
1.11 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Chapter 2 Activism and Protest in Authoritarian Regimes . . . . . . . . . 101
2.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
2.2 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
2.3 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
2.4 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
2.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
2.6 Activists and Policy Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
2.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
2.8 Supplementary Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
2.8.1 Detail on Topic Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
2.8.2 Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2.8.3 Hashtag Topics by Social Movement . . . . . . . . . 149
2.8.4 Blackout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
2.9 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Chapter 3 Longitudinal Network Analysis with Incomplete Data . . . . . . 163
3.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
3.2 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
3.3 Two Measures for Network Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
3.3.1 Inference of Edge Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
3.3.2 Centrality Measurement with Incomplete Data . . . 171
3.4 Network Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
3.4.1 Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
3.4.2 Network Data from Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
3.5 Activism During the Arab Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
3.5.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
3.5.2 Acquiring Activism Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
3.6 Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
3.6.1 Reconstructing Daily Network Change . . . . . . . 184
3.6.2 Daily Changes in Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
3.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
3.8 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Chapter 4 Twitter as Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
4.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
4.2 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
4.3 Why Twitter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
4.4 Acquiring Data from Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
vii
4.4.1 Purchase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
4.4.2 Collaborate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
4.4.3 Acquire on Your Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
4.4.4 Access Constraints and Replication . . . . . . . . . 214
4.4.5 A Note on Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
4.5 Types of Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
4.5.1 Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
4.5.2 Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
4.5.3 Spatial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
4.7 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1: Protests per Million Inhabitants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Figure 1.2: Marginal Effects of Peripheral and Core Coordination . . . . . . 36
Figure 1.3: Verifying Operationalization of Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Figure 1.4: Change in Effect Size as Function of Core Threshold . . . . . . . 41
Figure 1.5: ICEWS Correlates with Handcoded Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Figure 1.6: Blackout Influentials and Protest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Figure 1.7: PDF → CDF → Gini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Figure 1.8: Least Coordination: Bahrain on 02.08.2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Figure 1.9: Most Coordination: Egypt on 02.02.2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Figure 1.10: Egypt on 01.24.2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Figure 1.11: Core Coordination Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Figure 1.12: Core Coordination Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Figure 1.13: Daily Average Tweet Production by Popularity Threshold . . . . 65
Figure 1.14: Elite Follower Ratio by Popularity Threshold . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Figure 1.15: Coordination Peaks with 1-Day Lag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
i,t
Figure 1.16: More Protestors Correlate with More GDELT Protests . . . . . . 83
Figure 1.17: ICEWS Protest Recording, 4 Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Figure 1.18: Hashtag Intensity, Word Varies Based on Events . . . . . . . . . 92
Figure 1.19: Hashtag Use Varies by Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Figure 2.1: Mobility in Egypt, Bahrain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Figure 2.2: Egypt - Activists’ and Non-Activists’ Use of Common Hashtags . 150
Figure 2.3: April 6th - Activists’ and Non-Activists’ Use of Unique Hashtags . 151
Figure 2.4: NoMilTrials - Activists’ and Non-Activists’ Use of Unique Hashtags152
Figure 2.5: Anti-Sexual Harassment - Activists’ and Non-Activists’ Use of
Unique Hashtags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Figure 2.6: Bahrain - Activists’ and Non-Activists’ Use of Common Hashtags 154
Figure 2.7: Bahrain - Activists’ and Non-Activists’ Use of Unique Hashtags . 155
Figure 2.8: Activists’ and Non-Activists’ Differential Twitter Activity . . . . 157
Figure 2.9: Egypt - Differential Hashtag Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Figure 2.10: Bahrain - Differential Hashtag Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Figure 3.1: Pseudocode for Inferring Connection Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Figure 3.2: Degree Centrality = 5; NCC = 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Figure 3.3: Verification Against Ground Truth Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Figure 3.5: Bahrain and Egypt Activists, 01.24.2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Figure 3.6: Bahrain and Egypt Activists, 04.04.2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Figure 3.7: Reconstructed Temporal Change in Influence . . . . . . . . . . . 194
ix