Quantifying and Contextualizing Violent Collective Action Event Datasets

William O’Brochta () and Sunita Parikh
Additional contact information
William O’Brochta: Texas Lutheran University
Sunita Parikh: Washington University in St. Louis

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2025, vol. 176, issue 3, No 1, 883-902

Abstract: Abstract How does newspaper-based event data compare to a government data source? While scholars have long recognized the importance of and biases present in newspaper-based event data, few studies have compared newspaper reports with official government data to better understand the severity and impact of such biases. We develop this comparison in the context of riots, a form of violent collective action that represents an important middle ground between peaceful protests and protracted civil conflict. Using newly collected police precinct-level government data from India, we compare these data to a high-quality newspaper source. Though similar at the aggregate level, newspaper riot reports correlate poorly with government data at the local level. We model the frequency of newspaper and government riot reports based on literacy, location, and other demographic characteristics to better understand the discrepancies between these two sources. We conclude that newspaper riot data does partially reflect aggregate riot trends, but the newspaper editorial process also plays an important role. Government data is better for within country comparisons and for analyzing event trends over time. Our findings suggest that using collective action event data from both sources may help ensure that results are not driven by biases in either data source.

Keywords: Civil conflict; Communal violence; Newspaper data; India; Riots (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-024-03484-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:176:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-024-03484-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-024-03484-8

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().