> People don't usually protest in person unless they really believe in the underlying cause.
Citation needed. For riots, it's obviously wrong: football hooligans have been doing it for ages, and they have no underlying cause but "let's fuck shit up".
For demonstrations: it's mostly a social thing. If your friends go, you go, because otherwise you're signalling to your friends that you are not like them, and you don't want to do that, because being isolated hurts.
Citation needed. For riots, it's obviously wrong: football hooligans have been doing it for ages, and they have no underlying cause but "let's fuck shit up".
For demonstrations: it's mostly a social thing. If your friends go, you go, because otherwise you're signalling to your friends that you are not like them, and you don't want to do that, because being isolated hurts.