Ever wondered whether your favourite protest group really manages to change public opinion? We’ve teamed up with a fantastic group of data scientists to create the Media Impact Monitor - a tool that links protests to their impact on print, online and social media.
The Media Impact Monitor helps you explore the world of protest and activism, and the impact that it has on societal discourse. Today, we’re excited to share the prototype, featuring data from the German climate movement, with plans to expand to other causes and regions. If this could be relevant for you, reach out to discuss, and share any feedback or ideas to help us improve the tool.
Activists want to change the world – whether around the climate emergency, animal welfare, human rights, or other important topics. But measuring how successful they are can be challenging. The Media Impact Monitor visualises media data, using statistical models to assess how effective different protest groups and tactics are at raising awareness and building support for their causes.
The website includes various features (though some are still in early development, as this is the first prototype).
What the Media Impact Monitor can do
Explore protests events: Visualise ongoing protests, filtered by time range and organisation. Currently, we focus on climate protests in Germany, with plans to expand to more topics and locations.
Analyse protest coverage: Look up events you’ve attended or organised and view how they’re reported. The tool aggregates articles about an event and evaluates their sentiment toward the protest.
Quantify activist impact: Traditional measures like “press hits” are often inadequate for gauging success. We apply causal inference methods to estimate how protests influence broader public attention and support for their causes.
Monitor your organisation's media impact: If you belong to an organisation, we can collect data and provide custom dashboards with detailed statistics on your impact. Track citations from politicians and journalists, estimate your reach, and share these insights with supporters to encourage donations and action.
The Media Impact Monitor was developed by a data science and interface design team including David Pomerenke, Lennart Klein, and Lucas Vogel, with support from the Prototype Fund and the German Ministry for Education and Research. Activists from the German climate movement contributed user insights, and we’re grateful for their support.
Check out the Media Impact Monitor here: https://mediaimpactmonitor.app
If you're interested in our work or would like to collaborate, let's talk!
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