Protests by Claims
Protest Claims Summer 2019
Our first focus will be on protest topics. The following visualizations will seek to show the most popular protest trends of Summer 2019 and Summer 2020. Were there common protest claims in both? Or were they separate?
We trimmed to the Top 20 trends and used .explode to include as many of the same claims as possible. However, this dataset contains a lot of human errors or random groupings and so we find similar topics grouped separately.
In Summer 2019, the biggest trends appear to be related to anti ICE or pro-immigration demands, against gun violence, for collective bargaining and unionization, pro trump, pro impeachment and pro LGBTQ. As we present this by state it is interesting to note which states experienced various types of protest though we are hesitant to draw conclusions as many states experienced only a few different protest claims.
Protest Claims Summer 2020
In contrast, Summer 2020 brought very different protest topics. Overwhelmingly, there were many protests grouped under the broader category of anti-racism with smaller topics being against police brutality, defund the police, invest in black communities, black lives matter or commemorating Juneteenth. The third most popular topic was surprisingly specific “save the post office from donald trump and declare that postmaster general louis dejoy must resign, for protection of voting rights.” Additionally, the 5th most popular claim was “against child sex trafficking, #save the children” with a few others farther down the list in support of the police. These claims express the vast array of news and popular views that existed in a summer filled with a pandemic and uncertainty surrounding the election and national political scene. Here we also see the count of protests by state.
While the most popular protest claims are interesting, examining the claims by state doesn’t bring particularly interesting insights nor can we draw major conclusions. This may be partially because the dataset team expressed that the data collection was ongoing and has not concluded yet.
