Black Lives Matter and Granger Causal Testing: A Signal of Economic Deprivation

BlackLivesMatter (BLM) protests achieved historically high rates of participation in 2020, resultant of social and economic distress. This study observes the effect of strain through both a collective action framework and statistical methodology. Withstanding the departure of new social movement theories from the traditional paradigm, we apply an economic lens to understand the underlying strain on the BLM population. The Google Trends API and Granger Causal testing demonstrate that the outlying 2020 increase in social movement participation is predicated on the COVID-19 pandemic. There were significant short-run economic effects, namely, the misallocation of resources and labor market disequilibrium on the Black community. Our analysis additionally demonstrates the discrepancies between variable search rate increases and changes in their real counterparts. With all other contributing factors held constant, we find significant causal relationships towards BLM search rates, implying a directional propagation of pandemic-related socioeconomic forces and the resulting social movement participation, signaling economic deprivation.