2025/09/08 by Donatella della Porta, Sophia Hunger, Swen Hutter +1 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Government (linguistics) #Pandemic #Politics #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #Portuguese #Praxis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/14742837.2025.2554603
published in Social movement studies, 1-27 (Routledge)
openalex publication_date 2025/09/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
The pandemic did not bring protest politics to a halt. Instead, it sparked diverse and divergent forms of contention. This study compares the development and characteristics of anti-containment protests in Germany and Italy, offering three innovations. Conceptually, we introduce the notion of a protest script characterized by specific routinized dynamics and a contentious choreography, as well as frames expressed in slogans, banners, and speeches. Methodologically, we rely on video-enhanced protest event analysis (vPEA) to uncover these scripts, combining classical newspaper-based protest event data with video data analysis. Empirically, we show that the level of protest was higher in Germany than in Italy. Despite differences in the level and timing of protests, the study shows similarities and divergences in the countries’ protest scripts. Driven by far right and esoteric New Age actors, the protest events in both countries exhibit an escalating dynamic in terms of their choreography and the prevalence of conspiratorial and anti-systemic claims.