Listening to the Digital Pulse of Dissent: How Online Activity Can Help Predict Protest and Conflict

17 March 2026

The article “Listening to the Digital Pulse of Dissent: How Online Activity Can Help Predict Protest and Conflict”, by Christian Oswald, has been published in the CISS Munich Working Papers Series. In it, he provides an overview of his research into using digital trace data to predict political instability. He demonstrates that Google Trends and Wikipedia page views can be used to predict various forms of conflict intensity at country and provincial levels, while changes to certain Wikipedia pages can be used to predict mass mobilisation in autocracies. These data sources possess desirable predictive and early warning characteristics, such as real-time updating and flexible temporal aggregation ranging from months to weeks and days.

The article can be downloaded here.

More information on the Working Paper Series of CISS Munich can be found here.

 

Picture: CISS

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