The coding scheme uses three categories for the primary subject: protestors, police/military, as well as a combination of both protestors and police/military.
The primary subject category of protestors and the primary subject category of police/military contain images which feature only protestors or police and military members respectively, or images where either protestors or police/military are initiating the action.
The primary subject category of both protestors and police/military contains images where both subjects are shown with equal weight in the frame, such as clips where protestors are gathered in front of a police line, or images where it is unclear which subject group initiated the action, such as clips which begin with protestors and police already engaged in a physical altercation.
Action
The second level of categorization focuses on the action occurring in the image. Explore below to see examples of the coding scheme used to categorize actions.
These actions are then used to determine if the visual frame is representing peaceful or violent actions. The definitions for peaceful and violent actions articulate with the ACLED’s definitions for defining peaceful and violent protest events.