IMHO, the value of the protest is to demonstrate a portion of the electorate does not agree with whatever they are protesting. There are a lot of people in a bubble that seem to think the majority always views things exactly the same as they do. Maybe you will always default do doubling down on the status quo, but some people will eventually inquire as to why someone is willing to inconvenience themselves to protest. Once someone starts to be curious about other people's motivations and reasoning, it often does impact their own opinions, for good or bad.

A protest demonstrates a level of unhappiness with a group or policy. People may not believe what they see on the news, facebook, or youtube, but hopefully we have not reached a point where they refuse to believe what they see with their own eyes.

The point is to demonstrate "we are not alone in this feeling", that's it...

They didnt have to "force them to do what they want" just tip the balance of votes at the ballot box. For that aim protest seems like it could be quite effective.

In the age of centralized broadcasting where everyone watched the same TV channels ...

Those TV channels were virtually always (and to this day still are) controlled by "the government".

Meanwhile other TV channels, if there even were any, and if enough people even had chance to watch them (because limited frequency/transmission allocations, artificial limits on cable distribution ..etc) - were and still are labeled as "funded by foreign (state) actors that are trying to destabilize our independance/values/etc".

And it's more of the same online.

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This reminds me of an old website that's an absolute gold mine.

Knock yourself out https://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/minority_inf...

> It was always naive to think 3.5% of the population could force the other 96.5%

This makes 100%, right. But how many actually care and act, what are the dynamics?

Regarding the end of centralized broadcasting, one could argue that social networks might actually act as amplifiers of "small" events.

I don't understand this comment. What protesting does is let other people know there is dissent, and some people are willing to take to the streets. Enough people do that and you have networking effects as other people are motivated to take a stand. It makes the mainstream media, and representatives feel pressure to address the issue. I've been to a number of protests over the last year, and I can tell you there are even more people honking in support who drive by.

I'm not sure it's an anomaly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqBls-qpRM

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