Petitions to reject controversial speakers from college campuses would have little effect unless administrators were willing to formally disinvite speakers. So, why are administrators responsive to some movements to exclude certain perspectives from campus and not others? This paper attempts to answer this question through an empirical study of 349 speaker disinvitation attempts on 218 U.S. colleges and universities from 2000 to 2017. I use an original data set with information sourced from the Foundation for Individual Rights and U.S. News and World Report to determine what factors predict a successful formally rescinded invitation. My findings suggest that the forum of the speech, the petitioner type, and speaker type may predict the success of an attempt to disinvite a speaker from college campuses. My empirical results showed that conservative protests are better predictors of success than liberal protests. This paper addresses class bias and complacency with the academic culture in religious institutions as the main influencers causing pundits to ignore free speech politics at less selective, non-secular American colleges and universities.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / This study revealed the key role that social, historical, economic and political networks play in initiating and maintaining service delivery protests. While networks help in communicating service delivery problems among protestors and in mobilizing, protests that ensue are a means of communicating anger at the municipal authorities’ actions and or inactions. Using a reference to a hostage situation that occurred, I argued that there is a progression and intensification of protest tactics especially after ‘peaceful and legal’ means of engagement fail. Also, my research findings show that networks used for protest purposes can be used for other purposes. In light of this, I suggested that a better understanding, by protestors, of networks at their disposal and how they can use such networks for other community building projects is needed. Additionally, such an understanding by protestors may prove helpful for protestors to better organize and utilize their network resource and stage more effective but peaceful protests. Municipalities may use this information (networks) to communicate and connect with the communities they serve in a better way. In sum, the study further found that networks are important before the protest, during the protest and after the protest

The purpose of this study was to assess the role of the officials on housing service delivery in the Nelson Mandela by Municipality (NMBM). The role of the officials currently occupies the centre stage in the Public Service and they should be proud to be the servants of the people. Furthermore, they relish the challenge of providing improved services to all by applying the principles of Batho Pele. In order to meet the goals of the study, it was necessary to study the literature on the housing sector, in particular the role of Officials in the Nelson Mandela Municipality and the reasons why people marched and accused Officials of perceived Corruption in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. In order to address the research problem and to fulfill the research objectives, an in depth literature study was done. Empirical studies were done by means of face-to-face interviews and Questionnaires with the Sample population from the Community and the Department of Housing officials in NMBM. The findings of the study suggested that there is ineffective client interface, housing waiting lists are not properly managed, there is a lack of transparency in housing allocations, as well as favoritism by Officials, Councilors and Community leaders on the allocation of houses and there is also a problem of the illegal occupation of houses .The study further suggests that the role of Officials and Councilors needs to be improved if it is to serve as a catalyst for effective housing service delivery to the citizens of NMBM. Recommendations were put forward to assist the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality in improving effective and efficiency Housing Service Delivery.

In the last decade, social movements have demonstrated their power of bringing change to societies, often in terms of democratization. At the same time, the level of democracy in the world has been established as decreasing. It is therefore interesting to study whether the increase of social movements is related to the decline of democracy. The aim of this thesis was thus to explore the perception of democracy amongst activists in a social movement calling for democratization. This was done by conducting semi-structured interviews with activists of varying degrees of participation in the Hong Kong protests 2019 – 2020. The results of the study indicated that a majority of the activists regarded democracy from the perspective of liberal democracy, stressing the importance of elections and protection of human rights through a well-grounded constitution. Nevertheless, some of the respondents sought more than a fundamental description of democracy, incorporating elements of deliberation and participation as well. The Hong Kong protests 2019 – 2020 have not seen the end yet. Likewise, the existence of social movements will forever remain through variations of repertoires. The significance of what conception of democracy motivates activists to organise themselves through civil society movements remains to be academically covered in full. Thus, future studies of democratization should continue to shed light on the role of the civil society in democratization processes.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OFKimberly Noel Turner, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Political Science, presented on June 9, 2021, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: EDUCATION BULGES AND MASS PROTEST: HOW HIGHER EDUCATION INFLUENCES PROTEST ONSET AND OUTCOMESMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Stephen BloomCan trends in higher education attainment explain protest onset and outcomes? Beneficial state development indicators, such as education attainment, may produce detrimental employment outcomes. Nonviolent protests spread throughout the developing world throughout the 2010s, often in countries previously immune to public agitation. At the forefront of these protests were well-educated professionals, often doctors and lawyers. Why did these protests emerge? Why did middle-class groups initiate and lead these protests? How successful were these protests? The education bulge theory provides a framework for explaining the onset and outcomes of nonviolent mass protests in repressive countries. The education bulge theory captures the formation of skilled labor grievance and the spillover that influence the emergence of nonviolent, large and diverse protests. Chapter Two details the education bulge theory. Education bulges occur when a country undergoes sharp increases in university enrollments exceeding global averages. As university graduates increases, so does the supply of skilled labor. An increasing percentage of the population is then impacted when demand for skilled labor wanes, i.e. skills downgrading. Skills downgrading worsens the relative position of university graduates to other educational attainment groups, increasing tertiary unemployment and underemployment. Skilled labor compensates by downshifting, seeking out and competing for positions within the semi-skilled job market. This increased competition for semi-skilled positions pushes other educational groups down and out of the labor market. The global forces of labor polarization, education bulges, and skills downgrading are examined for their roles in inducing downshifting behavior. The fomentation of grievance amongst skilled labor is detailed, as well as the spillover effects for semi and unskilled labor. Flattening supplies of knowledge-intensive positions within the private sector along with public sector hiring reductions in the post-recession period exacerbates the decline of skilled labor’s relative position. Chapter Three examines objective measures of skilled labor’s relative position to other education attainment groups. Alongside theories of economic development and inequality, the education bulge theory is tested for its relationship to protest onset. Governmental expenditures on education, relative unemployment amongst primary, secondary and tertiary education attainment groups, and average wage growth are evaluated for their relationship with education bulges and protest onset. Bivariate and multivariate regression analysis indicate that skills downgrading is significantly increases the odds of protests emerging in highly repressive countries. Under an education bulge, additional governmental spending on tertiary education is positively correlated to protest onset. Do education bulges contribute to the overall successfulness of protests? In Chapter Four, I develop a new cost-benefit approach to measuring protest success. Canonical binary measurement of protest success fails to capture the relative concessions demonstrators might extract from their regimes. I develop a 21-point scale capturing the dimensions of gains protests might achieve (in the form of regime concessions) and the costs they pay for those concessions (in the form of state reprisals). Using Mokken scale analysis, country success scores pinpoint a protest’s position along a unidimensional continuum of abject failure to transformative changes in the body politic is developed. My measure offers an improved method of capturing regime behavior in the form of ‘ignoring’ and active repression. My measure also captures instances where protests may be misclassified as failures and features a stronger correlation for crowd age diversity. However, the success scores and binary measures often share directionality and strength for key causal factors. Thus, I cannot claim a definitive victory for my measure. However, unlike binary measures, my measure is able to offer more accurate confidence intervals for interactive relationships evaluated in Chapter Five. Chapter Five evaluates the relationship between political contexts and protest features. Entrenched leadership and repressive state structures are traditional deterrents to protest success. Education bulges, leadership tenure, and state repressiveness are evaluated for their influence on protest successfulness. Education bulges are found to increase overall protest successfulness. Education bulges are also found to increase crowd size and crowd diversity. Interactive relationships between education bulges, crowd size, and class diversity are examined. Class diversity and education bulges are individual have a positive and significant influence upon protest success. Education bulges are found to moderate class diversity, shifting class diversity’s effect on protest success from positive to negative. Regime concessions and protest successfulness are also influenced by external factors, such as sanctions, defections, and audience sympathy. External actors are more likely to apply reputational, material or defection costs against regimes when protests occur within education bulges and feature class diversity. These costs act as mediators of regime responsiveness. Under a mediated moderation model, the direct and indirect effect of education bulges, crowd size, class diversity, and regime costs are evaluated for their effect on protest successfulness. Education bulges increase reputational costs for regimes while class diversity increases material costs. Crowd size increased both material costs and defections. Education bulge contexts producing diverse and large crowds are more successful than non-education bulge protests. This study offers an examination of the role of higher education attainment upon the emergence and successfulness of nonviolent mass protests in authoritarian states from 2005-2013. Despite data limitations, robust findings indicate that education bulges increase the odds of a stable repressive regime experiencing protest onset and protest success. Failure of central governments to ensure commiserate employment for their growing pools of skilled labor increases grievance, crowd sizes and diversity, and punitive action against governments seeking to repress demonstrators.

Throughout history, the Black Diaspora has used fashion as a form of protest. The element of fashion is often overlooked when considering the history and struggle for Black equality, because it is less tangible or definable in terms of its influence and effect, but it is still important because Black males resist the dominant culture via dress by dressing in military uniforms, creating their own style, and using different colors in their dress. Studying the Black struggle in American history during specific periods is one way to better understand opposition to the majority culture through fashion. We should also consider the mood of a social system when examining the dress of a particular group during conflicts. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of fashion as a protest tool against the majority culture, and the social mood that affects the fashion choices of Black males. The study focuses on Black fashion from 1910 to 2015. Text data were collected and analyzed from articles published in The Crisis magazine, and men's fashion was specially examined. Additionally, images were studied via visual ethnography and images were coded based on color choice, fit, and accessories. For conducting sentiment analysis, lexicons were used, and the text was examined for negative sentiment. The overall negative sentiment of the document was obtained. Graphical analyses are included to present the findings. The findings, conclusions, limitations, and future research are discussed.

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The coverage of news media on conflicts increasingly became the subject of criticism, accused of sensationalism, oversimplification, and underrepresentation of certain issues. While recognizing that it is the journalists and editors that make choices regarding the collection and framing of the stories and accounts published in newspapers and digital media outlets, this thesis sets to understand these choices against the background of the web of structural constraints pertaining to professional, organizational, economic and political contexts of their work. Drawing on a theoretical perspective of Peace Journalism and Bläsi’s model of factors influencing conflict-coverage, this thesis explores what factors influenced the coverage of Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition protests and how they can be seen as hindrances or facilitators for Peace Journalism. The study presents the results of a qualitative content analysis of material obtained through semi-structured expert interviews with four journalists who covered the protests on-site. The findings display that factors pertaining to the journalistic system, personal features of the journalist, lobbies, conflict situation on-site, public climate, and audience were playing a significant role in shaping the news production throughout the Anti-Extradition protests. A majority of these factors were identified as limiting rather than facilitating Peace Journalism. This study suggests that in order to have a relevant and lasting impact, Peace Journalism needs to formulate strategies that consider the realities journalists face on the ground and factors influencing conflict coverage that pose limitations to its practice.

This diploma thesis examines the image of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests in 2019 in the Czech and Chinese media. The framing of these protests in selected media is compared using the method of quantitative content analysis, with the aim of revealing similarities and differences both between the individual Czech media in the context of the Czech public debate on China and between the Czech and Chinese media. The theoretical part of this thesis presents the concepts of media theory such as framing, agenda setting and social construction of reality and characterizes the specifics of given media systems. Furthermore, the work describes the previous findings of the protest paradigm, which are then employed in analytical part of this study. At the same time, the concept of soft power with Chinese characteristics and its specific manifestations in the efforts of the People's Republic of China to influence the Czech public debate on China is introduced. The methodological part then presents the research goal, research questions and hypotheses, defines the research sample and the research method used, including the characteristics of individual variables. The analytical part of the work presents the results of the research, which are then discussed in the framework of previous findings of the protest...