Protests have become a media‑first cultural product where the performance (the video, the shared trope) is the object, not persuasion or policy. Participants intentionally produce repeatable, camera‑friendly scenes that feed platform attention algorithms and institutional narratives.
— If performative protest is the dominant mode of modern protest, policing, public safety, media coverage, and urban governance must adapt from adjudicating facts to managing attention economics and ritualized spectacle.
David Dennison
2026.01.16
78% relevant
Dennison’s skepticism about protesters martyring themselves for an unclear goal echoes the notion that many modern demonstrations are designed as cultural productions optimized for attention rather than as deliberative policy campaigns, with predictable consequences for how institutions respond.
Ryan Zickgraf
2026.01.15
86% relevant
The article repeatedly describes protesters staging camera‑friendly confrontations (chants, gear, taunts) and federal agents reacting in ways that create viral spectacles; that directly maps to the idea that modern protest is often engineered as cultural content that drives downstream media and policy consequences.
Emily Jashinsky
2026.01.14
86% relevant
This article documents the exact phenomenon the existing idea names: protests intentionally staged for camera‑friendly spectacle (whistles, surrounding reporters, blocking cars) that function as cultural products amplified by social platforms; it provides current actors (ICE watchers, Millennial moms, nonprofit training) and viral clips that exemplify the concept.
B. Duncan Moench
2026.01.13
82% relevant
Moench emphasizes how viral footage and choreographed outrage shape political outcomes and justify state responses; this matches the idea that modern protest is often produced for media consumption and that spectacle alters policing and public reaction.
Chris Bray
2026.01.12
100% relevant
The article’s Fresno and Minneapolis examples (protesters invoking Selma, ubiquitous phone recording, scripted 'MEDIC!' calls) show direct instances of protests optimized as reproducible screen content.