As 2024 draws to a close, we want to extend our thanks to everyone who supported Social Change Lab this year. Whether through generous donations, expert advice, or sharing insights, your contributions have been invaluable in enabling us to continue delivering high-quality research.
In a year marked by increasing challenges for activists—facing both heightened repression and funding shortages—your support has never been more critical.
A look back at 2024
This year has been a busy and impactful one for Social Change Lab. Here’s a snapshot of what we achieved:
Research highlights
Non-violent disruptive action: we published our paper, ‘Radical climate protests linked to increases in public support for moderate organizations’, in the top ranking journal Nature Sustainability. We also produced an impact analysis of the Insulate Britain campaign, and public opinion polling of record prison sentences for Just Stop Oil supporters planning nonviolent protests.
The funding landscape for activists and campaigners: we explored funders' attitudes towards supporting campaigners and activists through a survey and interviews with a range of funders.
The animal advocacy movement: we examined public opinion impacts of Animal Rising's Grand National protest and conducted a randomised trial on how attitudes to animals are affected by descriptions of different animal rights protests.
Resources for the movement
We developed resources for activists, NGOs and researchers:
The Media Impact Monitor: a prototype data analysis tool, created with data scientists, to assess how protests influence print, online and social media coverage.
The Activists Resource Hub: a curated website of resources available to activists and campaigners.
Media coverage and public engagement
Our work gained extensive media attention this year.
Coverage of our polling on record prison sentences for Just Stop Oil supporters appeared in the Guardian, BBC, and The Big Issue, and was discussed widely on Twitter/X.
Other outlets, including New York Magazine, nature, The Conversation and Alliance Magazine also covered our research.
We appeared on radio and television, including TRT World and NPO Dutch Public Radio.
Sharing our findings
We presented our research at conferences and events:
In May, we hosted a webinar to launch our Insulate Britain report, attended by 40+ funders, academics, NGO representatives, MPs’ staff, and Insulate Britain activists.
In October, we joined the Reducetarian Summit in Dallas, Texas, speaking on the role of data in animal advocacy movements.
In November, we provided a summary of key evidence around disruptive protests at the EAGxVirtual conference.
Video: Our talk at the EAGxVirtual conference 16 November 2024
What stakeholders say about us
Thank you to everyone who completed our stakeholder survey in July. Highlights include:
An average likelihood score of 8/10 for using our research to inform your work.
Over 50% of respondents said our research had changed their beliefs or strategies regarding social movements.
Extensive written feedback, including from one respondent: "As a research org that advises on policy, I find Social Change Lab's research invaluable. I see it as foundational research that should have been done by academics decades ago if they actually cared about making a difference."
Looking ahead
We have a number of exciting new projects planned for 2025, including research on:
The impact of disruptive protest on voting intention: using longitudinal polling data, we will assess how disruptive climate protests affect political party support by tracking voter sentiment.
How long do attitude changes due to disruptive protest last? Online experiments with participants over defined periods, to measure how and in what ways attitudes to disruptive tactics evolve over time.
Understanding the impact of actions directly targeting powerful institutions / decision makers: exploring whether such approaches lead to greater public and policy impact than general public disruption.
It’s been a productive year, and we’re excited to build on this momentum in 2025. If you'd like to discuss our work in more detail, or if you are a funder and are interested in supporting Social Change Lab, please do get in touch.
All the very best and here’s to more progress in the year ahead!
The Social Change Lab Team
Image in header © Ted Eytan / CC BY-ND 4.0 Deed.