The masters thesis uses the Friday bicycle protest movement between the years 2020 and 2022 to research the relationship between public space in Ljubljana and protests. The thesis aim is to find out if and how do certain characteristics of public space affect protests and how is space itself used as a tool of political dissent. The method is based on an analysis of more than 1,900 posts on social media and media outlets’ websites, which were used to create a map of all 105 Friday bike protests. The results show that the choice of location and method of protesting was not random, but was rather driven by protesters’ specific grievances and responded a strategically to physical constraints such as police barricades and government measures to prevent the spread of the epidemic. Further analysis of Republic Square as the central venue of the protests sheds light on a battle for the void, which the police attempted to control by erecting fences, while the protesters understood it as a spatial manifestation of their political struggle. The findings confirm that the use of space during protests is not random and show us that public space during times of conflict is not merely a passive backdrop, but an active means of challenging social and political distance.
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