Data Set
7
Political meaning-making in Romania's recent mass protests (~2012-2019)
Ethnographic research with Romanian activists connected to the protest cycles between 2012-2019 - collaborative talks, interviews, participant observation, activist publications
Version 1.0, published: March 10, 2025.
Description
The data were collected in course of the doctoral research project 'Processes of political meaning-making and contentious positioning. Recent Romanian cycles of mass protest and their activists' motives and demands', DOI 10.26092/elib/3539. placed at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen. The research was carried out in 5 fieldstays in Romania, between 2021 and 2024, visiting Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Stanciova, and Ploiești. It was prepared and supplemented, besides the scientific literature review, through extensive social media following, from 2017 on, including an array of ~200 individuals and ~170 group sites, mainly on Facebook.
The dataset contains records and (selective) transcripts of 30 collaborative talks and follow-up interviews with 21 Romanian activists connected to the 2012-2019 protest outbreaks in the country, accompanied by extended fieldnotes and a corpus of supplementary material, i.e., activist publications, as well as social media and media outlets produced by or connected to the interlocutors. Moreover, the dataset contains field journals and visual documentations of participant observations at 2 protest sites and two public panel discussions. The analysis and interpretation of data was guided by the author's memos about field contacts with 107 individuals, and visiting manifold activist sites, which had to be deleted after analysis, as full consent for written documentation could not be ensured especially in dynamic group settings. All individual interlocutors gave their informed consent to participating, member checking was conducted in subsequent talks and/or written conversations. All written records were anonymized and pseudonomyzed. The templates for anonymization and pseudonymization, as well as the original list of interlocutors, their collectivities and social media accounts, were saved on a password-protected, offline data carrier, which is destroyed after completion of the publications. Interlocutors and observation sites were selected using a combined snowballing/confronting strategy.
Countries
Keywords
Protest Civil Society Romania 2012-2019 Contentious Politics Political Difference Political Positioning Protest Commemoration Protest Organization
Language of data
Disciplines
Political Anthropology Political Ethnography Political Science
Methods of data collection
Collaborative Research Field Exposure Interviews Participant Observation