Inspired by Robert’s Climate Activism 101 course, I have become more and more interested in reading about non-violent protests and understanding how they work.

Throwing tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is the opening example of Badullovich et al. (2024) — when are non-violent civil disobediences accepted by the public? They look at different actions (from physically assaulting people, which is generally perceived as highly inappropriate; over blocking roads, cyber attacks, cycling slow in front of traffic (really? what’s the problem with that??), spray painting buildings, which becomes less and less inappropriate to being perceived as neutral; to striking and boycotting, which are perceived as appropriate) and targets (museums that don’t accept fossil fuel funding is perceived as highly inappropriate; ordinary people driving to work which is still perceived as not ok, but less bad; and over banks, universities that accept fossil fuel money towards fossil fuel companies, which are generally accepted targets). When both the action and the target are perceived as appropriate — so action being non-violent and targets directly responsible — actions get more positive reactions in the population.

However, there might be secondary effects of protests even when they themselves where perceived as inappropriate. In the article “Radical climate protests linked to increases in public support for moderate organizations” by Ostarek et al. (2024), they discuss how “extreme” or “radical” actions — like glueing yourself to a runway or throwing soup at paintings — are general unpopular and do not work in favour of the groups doing them (and so far, I have been citing earlier research that suggests that for example in protest imagery, you should stay away from depictions of too radical actions in order to have a positive influence). However, in this new research, it turns out that they do have a secondary effect: By drawing a lot of attention to the action, they are also drawing attention to the bigger cause and other groups that support it. The “radical flank effect” can work both ways: Increasing public support for more moderate groups, or backfire for the whole movement.

In their study, Ostarek et al. (2024) look at how short-term, radical actions by one group influence support for a more moderate group. Since they knew about the radical actions in advance, they had the chance to develop instruments, and ask questions about how much people know about, and support, both groups before as well as after. And they found that there was a 3.3% increase in people that at least sympathised a little with the moderate group after the radical group’s actions. Interestingly, this did not translate into a larger support for general climate actions in general, likely because there was a polarisation of sceptics getting even more sceptical through the radical actions.

Moderate groups can however use more radical actions for their advantage, by timing their own actions so they happen at the same time as radical actions so that, in comparison, they look a lot more reasonable, which also makes it more likely that policy-makers will talk to them rather than the more radical groups.

Now I am kinda curious about how much cooperation there is between different groups and how strategically the decisions for radical actions are typically made, as to funnel sympathies towards a different group…

Badullovich, N., Tucker, D., Amoako, R. et al. How does public perception of climate protest influence support for climate action?. npj Clim. Action 3, 16 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-023-00096-9

Ostarek, M., Simpson, B., Rogers, C. et al. Radical climate protests linked to increases in public support for moderate organizations. Nat Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01444-1