A large amount of people who attended protests against the Victorian vaccine mandates and state government’s pandemic legislation last month came from outer suburban areas including Werribee and Tarneit.
Market research company Roy Morgan has released research into the set “home” location of protesters’ mobile phones, as captured by location intelligence and mobile data company UberMedia between 11am and 2.30pm on Saturday, November 20.
At this time, protesters were gathered in front of Melbourne’s Parliament House, allowing UberMedia to gather their mobile location data.
The data was assembled using geofencing, a location-based service in which an app or software harvests cellular data when a mobile device crosses a virtual boundary set up around a geographical location.
Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine said the data showed that the heaviest concentrations of protesters were from outer suburban areas of Melbourne such as South Morang, Tarneit, Cranbourne, Langwarrin, Werribee and Caroline Springs, although there were protest attendees from across Melbourne.
“In addition, some protesters had ventured from various parts of country Victoria and as far away as Torquay, Ocean Grove, Geelong, Ballarat, Wonthaggi, Traralgon, Warragul, and out past Wallan to the north of Melbourne,” Ms Levine said.
Roy Morgan further analysed the protester data to produce a summary of the types of people who attended the demonstrations, assigning everyone to a certain profile group.
A statement from Roy Morgan said two particular communities were “over-represented” at the Melbourne CBD protests.
This included 400 “hearth and home” protesters whose “life revolves around the home” and “who embrace conventional family life”.
About 600 “fair go” individuals attended the protest.
Those in this group are classified as lower-income Australians struggling to make ends meet, “looking for a better deal in life, making the best of things or simply pessimistic, cynical and likely to feel they get a raw deal out of life”.
“It should perhaps not be a surprise that those already facing a struggle to make ends meet and get ahead in life are out on the streets protesting government vaccine mandates,” Ms Levine said.
