Past Session
Monday, February 5, 2024
17:30h
Presented by
Sulin Sardoschau (Humboldt University)
https://sites.google.com/view/sulinsardoschau/home

Public Signal and Private Action: Right-wing Protest and Hate Crimes against Refugees (joint with Annalí Casanueva Artís)

Abstract

How does the success of a movement influence the most extreme fractions within it? We examine this question in the context of the ascent of PEGIDA, Germany's most prominent right-wing movement since World War II. We combine a difference in differences strategy with variation in local weather conditions to show that municipalities experience a surge in hate crimes following protest days with a larger number of participants. The effects are most pronounced for municipalities with higher social media penetration and a more economically vulnerable refugee population. We also document that large protests have substantial spill-over effects to other municipalities that propagate through social media networks rather than geographic proximity. Our findings suggest that a public display of support for a movement — measured in terms of protest attendance and favorable public perception — can reduce the social cost of radical behavior and embolden extremist factions within the movement.

About this workshop

The Public Governance workshop is an online seminar series focused on state of art research in political economy that uses non-traditional data and data-intensive methods.

The workshop gives a platform for the research on the role of governance in designing and developing better policies. Key features are the political environment, the role of the media, the engagement of stakeholders such as civil society and firms, the market structure and level of competition, and the independence of public regulators, among others. Particular emphasis is placed on research with NLP methods due to the proven usefulness of transforming text into data for further econometric analysis.

Periodicity: Mondays from 17h30 to 19h.