ProDem researchers Matthias Hoffmann, Felipe G. Santos, Christina Neumayer, and Dan Mercea have published the article “Lifting the Veil on the Use of Big Data News Repositories: A Documentation and Critical Discussion of A Protest Event Analysis” in Communication Methods and Measures. In it, they engage with big data repositories and critically discuss the usage of big data, its implications and invisibilities for social science research in general, and protest research in particular.

The article is published open access and can be viewed here: “https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19312458.2022.2128099

“Thirty Years of Capitalist Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe: Inequalities and Social Resistance”, organized by Babeș-Bolyai University and the Institute for Social Solidarity, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 20 – 22 May 2021.

A recent panel co-organized by Diana Mărgărit, with the participation of Dana S. Trif and ProDem expert Henry Rammelt, analyzed the unexpected rise of Romanian social movements. The panel – Social Movements and Counter-Movements in Times of Crisis – organized within the framework of the conference Thirty Years of Capitalist Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe: Inequalities and Social Resistance, Cluj-Napoca, 20-22 May 2021, discussed the most recent, and by some accounts the only post-1989 wave of social protests leading to the emergence of Romanian social movements and movement parties. Beginning in 2013 and reaching their highest moment of intensity in January/February 2017, these mass demonstrations energized a whole new generation of political activists, effectively stopping Romania’s slip towards illiberalism.

In a recent online discussion organized on May 19, 2021 by the Vienna-based Institut für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa, ProDem team member Dana S. Trif joined former Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, journalist Carmen Bendovski, historian Kurt Scharr and Berlin-based Romanian expert Janka Vogel in a discussion about the political situation in Romania, six months after the elections of December 6, 2020. What are the long-term effects of the 2017 pro-democracy, anti-corruption protests? Is their impact still felt in Romanian politics? Dana S. Trif joined the other panelists in an assessment of Romania’s current political developments. One major development post-2017 is that USR PLUS, the movement party drawing its roots from the social movement associated with these protests, has become an important coalition member. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll, with the December 2020 elections generating at least one major political surprise. AUR, a far-right populist party, succeeded in convincing 9% of the voters with its nationalist and anti-quarantine message. The COVID-19 pandemic is adding therefore a new layer of volatility to Romanian politics, with the outcome of the 2024 elections still difficult to predict. The whole discussion can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFK_rOXiL-M&t=1622s

We proudly present our poster presentation for the virtual poster exhibition of our funder VolkswagenStiftung.