Short answers, pulled from the story.
A protest is a public act of objection, disapproval, or dissent against political advantage. It can range from individual statements to mass political demonstrations, and protesters may aim to influence public opinion, government policy, or enact change through direct action.
Protests can take the form of rallies, marches, vigils, pickets, civil disobedience, ceremonies, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, die-ins, protest songs, and online or peopleless protests. The Dynamics of Collective Action project and the Global Nonviolent Action Database document these tactics, with Gene Sharp's classification identifying 198 distinct methods of nonviolent action.
A study of 342 United States protests covered by The New York Times from 1962 to 1990 found that stock prices of targeted companies fell an average of one-tenth of a percent for every paragraph of media coverage the protest received. The amount of media coverage was the most important factor, more so than the size of the protest itself.
When protests are part of a systematic and peaceful nonviolent campaign to achieve a specific objective, and involve the use of pressure as well as persuasion, they go beyond mere protest and are better described as civil resistance or nonviolent resistance. The Solidarity movement in Poland from 1980 to 1989 and the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965 are examples of this distinction.
Observers have noted an increased militarization of protest policing in many countries, with police deploying armored vehicles and snipers against protesters. In the United Kingdom, policing data from a four-day period in 2023 recorded 67 protests requiring 622 officers at an estimated cost of £140,346.
A peopleless protest is a form of demonstration involving physical representations of protesters in public spaces that are subsequently assembled online, developed in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Spain in 2015, holographic projections of protesters were used to highlight the use of anti-protest laws.