In the latest edition of my Tactics In Practice (TIPs) series, I analyzed the research behind protest in the animal protest movement! The full resource is well worth reading for any activist who uses street demonstrations — check out the full thing here: Tactics In Practice: The Science Of Protests And Demonstrations.
Key Highlights:
Protest groups tend to have three main goals, shown below. I wasn't able to find empirical evidence on Goal 3 (positive or negative), but anecdotal conversations lead me to believe that protests can serve as good cultivation tools for other activists. But I was able to find more information on the other two goals.
Protests can’t change people’s diets; we need to pursue other targets. (That doesn't mean protest is a bad tactic! Just that it's ineffective if we apply it to the wrong target)
All protest has some form of backlash — this backlash is among the highest of animal advocacy interventions, if not the highest. While research shows this backlash fades over time, activists need to think critically about how to work with it. Either take steps to reduce the backlash (through media plans, carefully chosen tactics, etc.), or as part of a larger strategy. Which brings us to:
We need to think more critically about the “radical flank effect” (sometimes called “good cop, bad cop”) — if one protest group is perceived as more radical, a more moderate group will be more accepted. However, this requires careful strategy and coordination. I personally believe that groups involved in protest should consider which role they play in the broader ecosystem: are they radical? Moderate? And how will different groups engage with the key decision-makers?
Protest impact depends on the media in both the short-term and long-term, so protest groups need a media outreach plan.
Protestors need to think very carefully about the salience of their protest — where, when, and why is this protest taking place? Can activists carefully choose a cause more likely to garner media attention (something more specific than “animal rights”)?
Groups need to pick the goals of the protest carefully. As mentioned above, "go vegan" is unlikely to have much impact. This requires understanding opinion polling on a topic as well as the likelihood of specific stakeholders to create positive change.
This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
