Protest participation propensity cues and selective recruitment: Dyadic evidence on rational prospecting.

Who takes to the streets to protest matters. Protest sends signals to decision-makers and biased participation leads to biased signals. This paper examines one driver of biased participation, namely protest recruiters behaving as rational prospectors by only inviting others who they believe are likely to agree to the participation request.

The missing link in the diffusion of protest: asking others.

Mobilization for protest is a process of diffusion in interpersonal networks. Extant work has found that being asked by people one knows is a key determinant of participation, but the flip side--asking others--has been neglected. The authors examine which prospective participants are most likely to ask others to participate and whom they ask.