Activity of Opposition Telegram Channels and Behavioral Factor of Google Users as a Research Method for Analyzing the Protests in Belarus in 2020

The protests in the Republic of Belarus in August-November 2020 have been studied in article on the basis of data from Telegram Analytics and Google Trends, based on structural and functional analysis and a network approach, have been studied. A method of determining the cycles of protest activity is proposed, according to which Belarusian events can be divided into weekly periods. Specified protests are denoted as a network revolution - a state coup technology based on the concept of isolating the pillars of support for the political regime - he consistent paralysis of the states protection and management bodies, as well as the use of Internet resources for the mobilization, communication and coordination of protesters. The organizers of the network revolution have planned two options for the development of the state coup. The first one is the creation of a permanent hotbed of protests in the center of the capital and the gradual isolation of the pillars of support of the regime. The second one is holding a series of decentralized actions followed by consolidation and formation of a permanent hotbed of protests in the center of the capital and major cities. The experience of the events in Belarus showed that if the pillars of support for the regime are maintained, namely the bodies of state management and the institutions of internal protection of the Interior Ministry, the KGB, protests subside on the second week of protests.

‘Out With the Bases of Death’: Civil Society and Peace Mobilization in Greece During the 1980s

The peace mobilisation against the Euromissiles in the early 1980s constituted one of the biggest mass movements in contemporary European history. The article aims to examine the completely neglected, albeit impressive peace movement in Greece of the 1980s. What mobilised these activists? How did they frame the notion of peace? What were the political conditions under which the discourse of peace became powerful? What was the role of the state and political parties? How did they protest? The article will use national and local press, transnational and Greek peace campaign material, semistructured interviews and polls to provide rich and unique evidence on the way protesters mobilised in recently democratised Greece. Recent accounts of peace mobilisation have emphasized its pan-European character. While acknowledging the merit of transnational approaches, the archival based project, informed by new social movements theory, aims to contextualise cycles of protest mobilisation and highlight the role of national identity that transcended Cold War narratives.

The dynamics of class mobilisations: evidence from protest event analysis in Bulgaria and Slovenia

Following the recent interest of bringing capitalism back into social movement studies, this article contributes to the debate with the application of new techniques for examining the dynamics of social class in protest politics. Questioning the declining importance of labour mobilisation in the recent anti-austerity cycles of protest in eastern Europe, I draw on a unique protest event dataset to propose a new way of exploring the relations between social class, repertoires and claimmaking. I show that this innovation can bring greater clarity to a systematic analysis of social class politics in the protest arena. The empirical exploration highlights that more than one-third of the protest events in Bulgaria and Slovenia in the aftermath of the financial crisis were driven by specific social class actors. The article suggests that, contrary to individual-level data, social class can be observed through the basic conceptions of workers and independents; and then through site and sector: production; services; and socio-cultural. These typologies help in understanding where mobilisations arise, under what conditions and for what demands.

Uruguay, 1968. Algunas líneas de análisis derivadas del estudio de la protesta estudiantil en un país periférico

This paper – focused on a deep analysis of the student movement that occupied the streets of Montevideo in 1968 – aims at proposing some analytical lines to understand this and other contemporary cycles of protest in different places of the world. After locating these events in a wide geography characterized both by political acceleration and the dramatic display of cultural change, four relevant themes in the growing body of literature on the «global Sixties» are raised. First, it is addressed the relationship between social movements and groups or political parties in these «short cycles» of protest. Second, the idea that violence was rather a catalyzer of political innovation rather than the result of political polarization is proposed. Third, it breaks down the diversity of possible links between culture, in a broad sense, and the forms of political participation in youth mobilizations. Finally, it can be more rewarding to look at different scales of analysis of these processes, from the strictly national to the transnational circulation of ideas and people.