Our working packages approach protest culture from the three perspectives: 1. The grassroots level, focusing on both activists/protesters’ and wider public’s views of and attempts toward the construction of civil power and protest culture; 2. The role of media as both a medium and an agent in fostering or hindering protest culture; 3. The authorities’ responses to the grassroots’ attempts of “civil repair” via their instrumentalization of both institutional and discursive strategies of manipulation, which we refer to as “hard” and “soft” measures, respectively. 

This project conceptualises protest as a symbolic and performative intervention that enacts civil power on the public stage. Drawing on theories of political performance, affective publics, and civil repair, it explores protest culture as a meaning-making practice shaped by both internal dynamics (such as emotional mobilisation and collective identity) and external constraints (such as media framing and state responses). The analysis spans countries with different qualities of democracy, highlighting how varying political contexts condition the articulation of protest. Special attention is paid to the role of media – both digital and traditional – as an arena, instrument, and actor in shaping protest visibility and legitimacy. The media are seen as central to enabling or obstructing “networked publics” and to influencing public perceptions of social wrongs and the possibilities for civil repair.