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Just Stop Oil: do radical protests turn the public away from a cause? Here’s the evidence (theconversation.com)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

But that’s not what we found. In fact, experimental manipulations that reduced support for the protesters had no impact on support for the demands of those protesters.

We’ve replicated this finding across a range of different types of nonviolent protest, including protests about racial justice, abortion rights and climate change, and across British, American and Polish participants (this work is being prepared for publication). When members of the public say, “I agree with your cause, I just don’t like your methods,” we should take them at their word.

Wow, that is both new (at least for me) and interesting - thanks for sharing this article. :)

I note a potential weakness in the method of analysis: if negative framing (e.g. by the media) reduces support for the protesters as persons (but not their cause), it may still somewhat harm their ability to bring about change, since it probably reduces people's willingness to team up with them - but not another group which has the same cause but different methods.

So, if the goal is mass action (which has a component of mobilizing like-minded people to join) I would strongly recommend a protester to choose non-controversial methods (so that even grannies can join). :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I would be shocked if negative framing did not have an effect, but unfortunately a tasty negative angle is exactly the kind of bait an antagonistic press is likely to go for in order to give the action greater coverage.

I've lost count of how many people have come here confident that JustStopOil has 'destroyed' art or 'damaged' stonehenge, and a couple that think the private jet action was a failure because they didn't paint Taylor Swift's plane specifically. All of them angles that hacks in the press have taken with these stories. Luckily, bastions of media literacy like the Fediverse exist, and while many of these people are difficult to disabuse of their false narrative, the actual story has definitely gotten better vote scores. Lemmy has been an even better platform in this regard than Reddit, which is a massive win for what we're trying to do here.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

"Radical" :

Sprays famous rocks with corn starch
Throws soup at some plexiglass
Glues hand to some road (more damage to the hand than the road) and makes a temporary trafic jam.

You can't get less radical than this, because then it wouldn't be a protest.

These people have my respect, because they play "the traditional media" like a fiddle.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago

It does kinda make sense

I am not in favor of this tactic (nor of blocking random-commuter roads) but I would never dream of saying “okay that’s it, because that happened I have now decided that climate change is not important anymore.” I cannot imagine any too significant amount of the public operates that way.

[–] Anticorp 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Destroying priceless art doesn't make me think less of our need for change, but it certainly makes me think less of the people who destroyed it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Where are you getting the idea that they're destroying pieces of art?

[–] Anticorp 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There was a pro-palestenian protest where they cut a hundred year old painting up with a razor blade.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You're shifting goalposts and conflating two different groups with different ideas and tactics.

Just Stop Oil activists protest in museums with timeless paintings with great cultural and historic significance. They take care that their actions don't irrevocably harm the art. The priceless quality of the art is essential to the message of the protest, as it contrasts with the priceless nature of what climate change is in the process of actually destroying.

The anti-genocide protester damaged a portrait of a British statesman displayed on the wall of a public area of Trinity College. This is part of a conceptually distinct form of protest where activists challenge public monuments to people with tainted legacies. The artistic merit of these products were pedestrian even for their time, and merely being old does not endow them with intrinsic cultural value. People concerned about the preservation of similar works have moved them to museums where their public display is less likely to be interpreted as an endorsement of their subject's legacy. One could argue that a greater artistic value comes from the creative defacement of these publicly displayed political advertisements that have long-since outlived their historical moment.

Do you carry the same outrage toward the destruction of monuments to Confederate commanders or defacement on Nazi memorials?

[–] FooBarrington 1 points 2 days ago

So that means you don't have a problem with all the other protests that didn't do anything like that?

[–] rockSlayer 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The public are not the people that need to be convinced. Threaten cultural landmarks until politicians stop fighting climate change mitigation.

[–] thedirtyknapkin 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

idk, it still feels like a fucked up thing to target. why not like... their houses?

[–] rockSlayer 7 points 3 days ago

I'm mostly ok with it because that's how the suffragettes were able to see success. They faced the same "but it hurts the cause" claims

[–] j4k3 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The alternative is a hit list on the people behind the resistance. That will come in time on the present trajectory. This is only the beginning.

[–] thedirtyknapkin 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

i just... harming the cultural artifacts is damaging to all of humanity. they should be targeting the people responsible more directly first. target their houses and their boats and them personally. target their families and the people around them. target the art they own...

hell, the same group does do things that hit the appropriate targets. i just don't think they're going the right direction with the art protests specifically.

the article is right, this isn't going to change anyone's mind one way or the other. it's not going to affect the minds of oil execs. the most it might do is increase the donations to the police that guard the art. it is at Best, mildy counterproductive.

the most it will do is piss everyone off. everyone is already mad, this is just making it worse.

it's destroying our common heritage. the history that we can see on front of us. to learn from where we came and see how we can progress.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

First off, nothing was destroyed or even significantly damaged so far.

Secondly, targeting individuals carries a much higher risk of civil litigation, potentially bankrupting the individual protestors for life. It is understandable that people don't really want to risk that. And it is also much less effective if your main goal is to incite media coverage to keep the topic in the public debate (as it is otherwise easily drowned out by what ever is the latest media freak-out incited by pundits like Trump that play a similar game).

[–] mojofrododojo 5 points 2 days ago

so you're more concerned about the status of our stuff than the survival of the species that creates the stuff?

also, what has been destroyed?

nothing. nothing has been destroyed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't think the current round of art protests turn people away — but they also don't really help much. There's actually a body of research about what works: large groups, acting nonviolently, with coherent coordinated demands that can be acted upon.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Thank you for sharing the supporting article. Sometimes, evidence contradicts intuition. From your link:

Less is known about the relative impacts of non-violent but disruptive tactics. “Is it better to throw soup on a painting, or block traffic, or glue yourself to something?” says Dana Fisher, a sociologist at American University in Washington DC. “We don’t know which is the most effective.”

But there is evidence that these types of protest can have an impact. Social Change Lab gathered opinions in three surveys — each asking around 2,000 people — before, during and after disruptive protests in the United Kingdom by Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion in April 20228. The protesters blockaded oil depots and glued themselves to government buildings and oil-company offices. Most people who were surveyed opposed the actions, but continued to support climate policies and Just Stop Oil’s goals to stop new fossil-fuel projects. This counters the view that disruptive action can sour public opinion on an issue.

Overcoming bias is an essential part of science literacy in both acknowledging climate change as a phenomenon and policy change to prevent it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah, disruptive can be completely acceptable. The problem is that it takes more than just disruptive to be effective — not just avoiding a negative impact, but having a positive one.

[–] Anticorp -1 points 2 days ago

It makes people angry at those individuals who destroyed the art, which does detract from their message on a subconscious level.

[–] Thcdenton -4 points 2 days ago

Just dont fuck with my day. If you block the 405 to save the earth, I'm gonna burn some tires in my back yard.

[–] Treczoks -3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I am sure that "Just Stop Oil" are working for the oil industry by discrediting all environmentalists as loonies. Change my Mind.

[–] mojofrododojo 4 points 2 days ago

pretty sure the sockpuppet brigades of "these protests are worse than the pollution" and "protest never changes anything" are are working for the oil industry. In fact:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/10/study-fossil-fuel-industry-lobbying-anti-protest-bills/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nice conspiracy.

[–] Treczoks -4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Well, that is the primary effect that their actions have: environmental groups are considered more often as "potentially dangerous" since "Just stop Oil", "Extinction Rebellion", and "Last Generation" suddenly popped up out of the nowhere into the limelight with their crazy and stupid stunts.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Reactionaries will always piss and moan about every kind of protest; "stupid stunts" or otherwise. Those are the people you don't listen to, because if they had it their way, there would be no protesting.

The fact is that even their outrage draws attention to the issues and non-disruptive protests typically don't have anywhere near that level of notoriety.

Edit: adding a sourced article that cites multiple studies on the matter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Environmental groups are considered more dangerous now than they were in the 90s/00s when Earth First and ELF were burning down homes, Sea Shepherds were sinking whaling ships, and there was this guy named Ted in a cabin in Montana you may have heard of?

Citation fucking needed.