"Using a variety of sources published during the early phase of the Arab
revolutions, I created a spreadheet (image below and
larger photo
here) with the lowest figure for Arab Spring crowd
estimates mentioned in the earliest, independent, Western news source I could
find for the period from December 10, 2010 through May 31, 2012. I stopped on
the latter date to ensure that figures for earlier protests do not contaminate
figures for the protests that began on September 11, 2012.
My crowd estimates for the current anti-American riots draw largely on a map by The Atlantic Wire, "A Map of Muslim Protests around the World", updated on an ongoing basis, in addition to a few additional sources. To avoid bias in favor of my hypothesis that the pro-democracy demonstrations were larger, I rounded up all of the crowd estimates for the anti-film protests, counting any media statement saying that "hundreds" protested as 500 people, and "thousands" as 5,000 people for countries in which specific numbers were not provided by the source.
While the size of crowds in both Arab Spring and the anti-film riots are both small as a percentage of the total population of each country, even with the generous rounding for the anti-American riots, the percentages involved in the anti-American incidents are much smaller. It should also be noted that the deaths involved in the "Arab Spring" were also much higher."
My crowd estimates for the current anti-American riots draw largely on a map by The Atlantic Wire, "A Map of Muslim Protests around the World", updated on an ongoing basis, in addition to a few additional sources. To avoid bias in favor of my hypothesis that the pro-democracy demonstrations were larger, I rounded up all of the crowd estimates for the anti-film protests, counting any media statement saying that "hundreds" protested as 500 people, and "thousands" as 5,000 people for countries in which specific numbers were not provided by the source.
While the size of crowds in both Arab Spring and the anti-film riots are both small as a percentage of the total population of each country, even with the generous rounding for the anti-American riots, the percentages involved in the anti-American incidents are much smaller. It should also be noted that the deaths involved in the "Arab Spring" were also much higher."
