Geospatial Analysis of Protests in the United States
GIS for Global Affairs Final Project // 15 December 2020
Geospatial Question
How does the demographic of a city, town, or state affect the quantity and topic of protests?
Study Area
This study will focus on the continental US. Though it could be applied globally, available and authentic data are most readily available on the US.
Literature Review
While protests are not a new phenomenon around the world, nor in the US, the sustained level of large protests throughout 2020 over various subjects is a shift in the utilization of protests as a tool of democracy. A geospatial analysis will allow for a geographic understanding of which subjects resonate in which regions, and to which demographics. Below are several articles discussing the different kinds of protests throughout the US in the past several months
- " Black Lives Matter May Be The Largest Movement in US History" - L. Buchanan, Q. Bui, & J.K. Patel. New York Times.
- "Anti-Mask Rallies Continue in US Amid Rising Coronavirus Cases & Deaths" - T. Beer. Forbes.
- " 'Count Every Vote': Protests Over Ballot Tallies Sweep Through US Cities " - M. Baker, N. Bogel-Burroughs, & S. Romero. New York Times.
- " What You Need to Know About This Year's Second Women's March " - G. Heyward & R. Ellis. CNN.
- " Young People Lead Millions To Protest Global Inaction on Climate Change " - S. Neuman & B. Chappell. NPR.
The above articles focus on a few of the bigger protests that occurred in 2020, but is by no means a complete list.
Methods & Data
To perform this analysis I will likely use the enrich layer function, along with one or two of the following tools:
- Geospatial Correlation
By combining demographic and population data with protest location, we will be able to determine if, and the extent to which, there is a geographical aspect to protests. Geospatial correlation will support the enrich layer analysis in looking at whether there is a geospatial pattern to the topic of protests in the US. It is common knowledge that cities tend to lean more towards the democrats while more rural areas tend to lean more towards the republicans. Other methods of analysis that were considered are: calculating the areas of influence, which will allow us to identify how far a city's reach truly is; and performing a suitability analysis would indicate which topics might turn into a protest depending on the region. A Geographic Correlation was deemed to be the best option moving forward.
Base Map 1
Base Map 1 shows the locations of protests in 2020 (black dots) and the median age of each state and its ethnicity demographics.. The interactive map provides detailed information on subject matter, location, number of people in attendance, etc on the various protests that have occurred in the US this year. The median age range for each state is depicted in choropleth form and additional information on the metrics as well as the male to female median age and ethnicity breakdowns, can be seen by clicking on the state and interacting with the information box that appears. The legend is located at the bottom left of the map.
2020 Protests with Median Age and Ethnicity Demographics US
Advanced Map
Median Age & Ethnic Demographics with Protests Join Feature
Data Analysis
While the data did not merge perfectly, it shows the expected data: locations with protests on civil rights tend to have more diverse populations. However, there were surprises in states with high diversity and where large amounts of protests occurred, such as California, Oregon, and New York. Each of the three states mentioned have seen large scale protests across towns and large cities over racial justice since late May 2020, however the data above shows smaller results for those states than for South Carolina and Washington DC. For future research on this topic more compatible data sources are recommended.
Limitations
This analysis is limited by available data. As shown above there have been several hundreds of protests across the US in 2020, there is no way of ensuring that every protest held this year was included. Additional limitations include compatibility of the data and accurate reporting on protests sizes.
Future Work
This topic is very timely and should not be the last of its kind. Analysis of the intersections between protest locations and wealth is an important facet of this area of study that should be investigated. Additional analysis could look into the whether the number of protests was affected by an election year, or whether this matches a larger trend of protests or is an outlier. Finally, it would be very interesting to see a geospatial analysis of any of these factors with protest location and whether the protests turned violent, and whether the violence emerged initially from protestors or police or national guard members. Conducting a suitability analysis or an areas of influence analysis are other approaches to this question that may provide interesting results.
References
ArcGIS Living Atlas: 2020 Protests
ArcGIS Living Atlas: Median Age Variables
ArcGIS Living Atlas: Race & Hispanic Origin Variables