Protestid

Protestid is a term used in protest event data to denote a unique identifier assigned to a specific protest event. It serves as a stable reference that allows records from different sources—such as news reports, social media posts, government notices, and academic datasets—to be linked and compared. In practice, protestid appears as a field in databases, spreadsheets, and application programming interfaces that catalog demonstrations, marches, rallies, and other forms of collective action.

Creation and form can vary widely. There is no single universal standard for protestid. Some datasets generate a universally unique identifier (UUID) or GUID to ensure global uniqueness, while others construct a composite code from elements such as date, city or country, and protest type. The trade-off between human readability and machine-tractability influences the chosen scheme, and cross-dataset compatibility is a common consideration for researchers and platforms.

Purpose and utility include deduplication, data fusion, and longitudinal analysis. A protestid enables researchers to merge records about the same event from multiple sources, track its evolution over time, and compare characteristics such as location, organizers, and size estimates. It also supports reproducibility and queriability in data portals and research workflows.

Limitations and challenges arise from the absence of a universal standard, language variations, and how protests that span multiple days or locations are represented. Crosswalking protestids between datasets often requires careful metadata documentation to avoid misalignment. Overall, protestid functions as a practical, if heterogeneous, tool for organizing protest data.