Measuring Social Unrest Using Media Reports
IMF Working Papers, July 17, 2020
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- Measuring Social Unrest Using Media Reports
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Philip Barrett, Maximiliano Appendino, Kate Nguyen, Jorge de Leon Miranda
- Published: July 17, 2020
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513550275.001
Index construction and data coverage
- New index of social unrest based on counts of relevant media reports.
- Individual monthly time series for 130 countries.
- Data available with almost no lag and designed to be easily and transparently replicated.
- RSUI event coding and RSUI index referenced as part of the methodology (keywords: RSUI data, RSUI event coding, RSUI index).
Validation and event identification
- Spikes in the index identify major events.
- Identified spikes correspond very closely to event timelines from external sources for four major regional waves of social unrest.
Cross-sectional characterization and statistical analysis
- The cross-sectional distribution of the index can be simply and precisely characterized.
- Subject and keyword tags include: Expenditure, Labor, Public expenditure review; appendix E; Arabic language; country-horizon pair; Media; Middle East, North Africa; political science; Protest; Public expenditure review; RSUI data; RSUI event coding; RSUI index; Social Unrest; South America; statistical analysis; Sub-Saharan Africa; terms OR; unrest events; WP.
Quantitative findings on contagion and persistence
- Social unrest is associated with a 3 percentage point increase in the frequency of social unrest domestically in the next six months.
- Social unrest is associated with a 1 percent increase in neighbors in the next six months.
- Despite these associations, social unrest is not a better predictor of future social unrest than the country average rate.
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