Depends on how you count them: the value of general propensity choroplethmaps for visualising databases of protest incidents

Abstract

Public protest represents an important sanction on rulers and institutions. Protest is a quotidian phenomenon in South Africa; perhaps the defining element of post-apartheid political life. Geographic representations of protest abound – typically dot distribution maps – but these merely confirm that more protests occur where there are more people. Visualisations of protest per capita and protestors per capita (or ‘general propensity’), which are best rendered as choropleth maps, are well-placed to overcome this limitation. The South African Police Services' database of protest is the largest publicly-available single-country protest event database. Having used machine learning to classify 89,000 protest events, I locate each within one of the country's 234 municipalities, and depict these events using counts, count per capita, and the general propensity. This reveals a proportionally high number of rural protests, and that municipalities hosting major industries, along with provincial seats of government, present the highest propensity for protest.