The Nearness of Youth: Spatial and Temporal Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes in Chile

Social movement research indicates that mobilization can effect change in political attitudes, yet few works have systematically tested the effect of protests on public opinion. This article uses survey and protest event data to assess the spatial and temporal effect of mobilizations on political attitudes Chile. It combines the 2008, 2010, and 2012 LAPOP surveys and a dataset of college student protest events, mapping respondents and protests at the municipal level using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Using regression analyses, it finds that proximity to college student protests has a significant effect on various political attitudes. The effect, however, tends to be substantively larger on “weak” attitudes and smaller on “strong” ones. The results highlight the importance of mobilizations in shaping individual political attitudes and the role that social movements play in the policy-making process.