Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 26th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Main Conference Theme Author(s) Reka Zsuzsanna Mathe Ludovika University of Public Service Budapest Hungary Title Social Movements of Central-Eastern Europe: Examining Trends of Cooperation and Antagonism by Using Big Data File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Reka Zsuzsanna Mathe Abstract The globalization and the Europeanization have significantly contributed to a change in the role of the nation states. The global economic crisis, the climate changes, and the recent refugee crisis, are just a few among many challenges that cannot be effectively addressed by the traditional role of the nation-states. One of the main roles of the states is to solve collective action problems, however due to their changing roles; apparently this is getting more and more difficult. Depending on political culture, collective action problems are solved either through cooperation or conflict. The political culture of Central and Eastern European countries is marked by low civic participation and by a weak civil society. In this type of culture collective action problems are likely to be induced through conflict, rather than the democratic process of dialogue, which would lead to wellbeing of citizens and growth in governance. In this type of political culture, any type of social change is probable to be introduced by social movements. Several studies have been conducted on the social movements of the CEE countries, yet, it is still not clear if the most significant social movements of the region tend to choose rather the cooperative or the conflictual way as action strategy. This study differentiates between the national and the European action field, having different social orders. The actors of the two fields are the broadly understood civil society members, conceptualized as social movements. The research tries to answer the following questions: a) what are the norms that best characterize the CEE countries’ social order? b) What type of actors would prefer a change and in which areas? c) Is there a significant difference between the main actors active in the national versus the European field? In mapping the social order, the study uses data provided by the European Social Survey. Big data of the Global Data on Events, Location and Tone (GDELT) database provides information regarding the main social movements and their preferred type of action. The unit of the analysis is the so called “Visegrad 4”countries: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary and it uses data starting 2005 (after the European accession of these four countries) up until May 2017.
