Temporal clustering of disorder events during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed multiple public health, socio-economic, and institutional crises. Measures taken to slow the spread of the virus have fostered significant strain between authorities and citizens, leading to waves of social unrest and anti-government demonstrations. We study the temporal nature of pandemic-related disorder events as tallied by the “COVID-19 Disorder Tracker” initiative by focusing on the three countries with the largest number of incidents, India, Israel, and Mexico. By fitting Poisson and Hawkes processes to the stream of data, we find that disorder events are inter-dependent and self-excite in all three countries. Geographic clustering confirms these features at the subnational level, indicating that nationwide disorders emerge as the convergence of meso-scale patterns of self-excitation. Considerable diversity is observed among countries when computing correlations of events between subnational clusters; these are discussed in the context of specific political, societal and geographic characteristics. Israel, the most territorially compact and where large scale protests were coordinated in response to government lockdowns, displays the largest reactivity and the shortest period of influence following an event, as well as the strongest nationwide synchrony. In Mexico, where complete lockdown orders were never mandated, reactivity and nationwide synchrony are lowest. Our work highlights the need for authorities to promote local information campaigns to ensure that livelihoods and virus containment policies are not perceived as mutually exclusive.

Theoretical and methodological approaches to activism during the COVID-19 pandemic— between continuity and change

“…Two other studies investigated the dynamics of collective actions of protest. Campedelli and D'Orsogna (2021) analyzed existing data to study pandemic-related disorder events in the three countries with the largest number of incidents, India, Israel, and Mexico, and could show, in all three countries, an interesting "contagion" effect, according to which disorder events showed inter-dependency. Graham et al (2021) considered online forms of protest and, more specifically, they examined two interrelated hashtag campaigns on Twitter in response to Australian regulations related to the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Epidemiological Dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Variants During Social Protests in Cali, Colombia

“…According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), more than 100 countries have been witnessed to internal civil disorder. Of these, India, Israel, and Mexico have been most afflicted by such events in relation to the development of the COVID-19 pandemic within their borders ( 18 ). Extensive domestic and international debates of “right-and wrong” have been encouraged by media outlets documenting these country-specific social issues.…”

Estimated Mask Use and Temporal Relationship to COVID-19 Epidemiology of Black Lives Matter Protests in 12 Cities

“…A potential limitation of this study is that protests were not limited to one protest per city and continued for weeks after the initial protest date. In addition, events, and behaviors other than protests, and measures other than mask use would have all been at play and influencing the epidemic trajectory in each city, including spatial and geographical factors [ 54 ]. We accounted as best we could for this by using the GSI [ 29 ].…”