Less fighting than expected

Abstract

Demonstration turnout is a crucial political resource for social movements. In this article, we investigate how mass media cover demonstration size. We develop a typology of turnout coverage and scrutinize the factors that drive turnout coverage. In addition, we test whether media coverage underestimates, reflects, or exaggerates "guesstimates" by organizers and police forces. Together, these analyses shed light on whether turnout coverage fits a logic of normalization or marginalization. We rely on a unique dataset of 428 demonstrations organized in Brussels (2003-2010). For these demonstrations, we have information on the turnout as reported in national television news, as counted by the police, and as expected by the organizers. We find that media present turnout most often as a fact, rarely as contentious (10 percent). Although few demonstrations pass the media gates, our study yields little to no evidence for a logic of turnout marginalization. Media coverage does not systematically underestimate demonstration size, nor does it blindly follow police counts. Rather, turnout coverage attests of a logic of normalization, following standard news-making practices. The more important the demonstration (size, lead item) and the larger the gap between police and organizer guesstimates, the more attention is paid to turnout in the news. Discussion centers on the generalizability and normative interpretation of the results.

Contests

“…The pattern of over and underbidding in the all-pay auction is consistent with a number of experimental papers including Barut, Kovenock, and Noussair [10] and Noussair and Silver [91]. In addition, Hörisch and Kirchkamp [54] find prevalent underbidding relative to the benchmark in the war of attrition which is also consistent with MEU. Hörisch and Kirchkamp [54] also find that the war of attrition generates less expenditure than the all-pay auction.…”

War and conflict in economics: Theories, applications, and recent trends

“…Also, consistent with the theory, conflicts escalate with the introduction of intermediate rewards (Mago et al, 2013;Gelder and Kovenock, 2017), and asymmetric contests tend to be resolved in favor of the contestant with the advantage (DeScioli and Wilson, 2011;Oprea et al, 2013). However, contrary to the theoretical prediction of frontloading, conflicts tend to last too long and remain intense in the latter stages (Zizzo, 2002;Hörisch and Kirchkamp, 2010;Deck and Sheremeta, 2012;Deck and Kimbrough, 2015), though Ryvkin (2011) finds some evidence of conflict fatigue. Finally, similar to the findings from all-pay auction and rent-seeking contest experiments, almost all studies mentioned above find that the average expenditure of participants in war of attrition experiments is significantly higher than predicted by the risk-neutral Nash equilibrium.…”

Ambiguity aversion in the all‐pay auction and war of attrition

“…The prediction of lower expenditure in the WOA than the APA is confirmed by experiments. Hörisch and Kirchkamp () find a significantly lower average expenditure in the WOA compared with the APA. However, the revenue ranking between the first price and APA has not been confirmed by experiments.…”

“…The theoretical implications of ambiguity aversion on bidding behavior and aggregate revenue derived here are largely consistent with observations from experimental work. A robust result in the experimental literature that studies the APA is that players with low values underbid, relative to the predictions of the benchmark model, and players with high values overbid (Barut, Kovenock, & Noussair, ; Hörisch & Kirchkamp, ; Noussair & Silver, ). Consistent with experimental results, ambiguity aversion decreases bids for low types and increases bids for high types in the APA.…”