Measuring Social Unrest Using Media Reports /

We present a new index of social unrest based on counts of relevant media reports. The index consists of individual monthly time series for 130 countries, available with almost no lag, and can be easily and transparently replicated. Spikes in the index identify major events, which correspond very cl...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Barrett, Philip
Other Authors: Appendino, Maximiliano, de Leon Miranda, Jorge, Nguyen, Kate
Format: Journal
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2020.
Series:IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2020/129
Subjects:
Online Access:Full text available on IMF
Description
Summary:We present a new index of social unrest based on counts of relevant media reports. The index consists of individual monthly time series for 130 countries, available with almost no lag, and can be easily and transparently replicated. Spikes in the index identify major events, which correspond very closely to event timelines from external sources for four major regional waves of social unrest. We show that the cross-sectional distribution of the index can be simply and precisely characterized, and that social unrest is associated with a 3 percentage point increase in the frequency of social unrest domestically and a 1 percent increase in neighbors in the next six months. Despite this, social unrest is not a better predictor of future social unrest than the country average rate.
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Physical Description:1 online resource (87 pages)
Format:Mode of access: Internet
ISSN:1018-5941
Access:Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students