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Crowd Counting Consortium Dataset

This repository is home to a compiled and augmented version of the Crowd Counting Consortium's data on political protest events in the United States. We use a broad definition of "protest," so the dataset includes protests, rallies, demonstrations, marches, strikes, and similar actions.

If you use these data, please cite "Crowd Counting Consortium" as the source.

If you have questions about the dataset, please email Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D., at julfelder@hks.harvard.edu.

General Information

We strive to update this data set weekly, on Wednesdays not later than 4 PM Eastern time, with exceptions around holidays and ends of months. Please note that, while the raw data are updated on a rolling basis, there is some lag between the appearance of a news story or social-media post about an event (or the submission of a form to CCC) and the addition of a complete record to CCC's Google Sheets. CCC strives to keep that interval as short as possible, but the project operates on a shoestring budget, so periods of higher protest activity can make for longer delays.

The compiled data set serves as the input to the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC) Data Dashboard, which interactively maps the events and plots summaries of them. Both the dashboard and the compiled data set are maintained by the Nonviolent Action Lab, a research program within the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. The Crowd Counting Consortium is co-directed by faculty at Harvard University and the University of Connecticut.

The CCC collects these data in the public interest and to further scholarly research. The CCC is not formally affiliated with any other efforts to collect data on demonstrations, though it collaborated with Count Love from 2017 until early 2021. Anyone who wishes to conduct research using the data is fully responsible for any necessary contact with their own Institutional Review Boards.

We recognize that no large-scale data set on political crowds will ever capture all relevant events with 100% accuracy. Even so, we aspire to make this record as complete and error-free as possible. If you see a record that you believe needs correcting, or if you are aware of a relevant event that is not included, please do not open an issue here to report it. Instead, please submit a record or correction via the (anonymous) Google Form on the original CCC website.

If you have suggestions on how to improve this repository or the compiled version of the data it hosts, please submit a ticket via the "Issues" button above (or just click here).

Academic Research Using CCC Data

Curious how these data are getting used? Here, in reverse chronological order, are peer-reviewed published studies that have used CCC's work. If you are aware of any published articles or monographs that cite the data that aren't listed here, please let us know.

And here are some working papers we've seen that use the dataset. Again, please let us know if you're aware of others that should be listed.

Journalism Using CCC Data

Journalists also use CCC data, often to document trends or provide context in stories on specific events. Here are some examples.

CCC Blog

We occasionally publish short pieces of analysis and data visualization on our project blog, which you can find here.