Protests sometimes succeed in shifting public opinion (Boehmke et al 2023; Mazumder 2019; Klein Teeselink and Melios 2021; Mazumder 2018); on the other hand, demonstrations can also provoke a backlash against their aims (Wasow 2020; Chenoweth and Stephan 2011; Simpson, Willer and Feinberg 2019). Opposition to the military actions of foreign states has inspired large-scale social movements that affect relations between states (Klandermans 2007; Dixon and Piccini 2018; Ellis 2014). This study proposes to examine this under-explored intersection between social movement and international relations literature by investigating under what conditions protests against foreign governments persuade citizens within the target countries, versus provoke a backlash. We propose that protests originating in a foreign country are likely to antagonize the citizens of the target nation, thereby generating a backlash effect against the protesters' demands. Psychology literature on the intergroup sensitivity effect (ISE) has demonstrated that people tend to accept ingroup rather than outgroup criticism because they assume that an ingroup critics’ motives are constructive, whereas an outgroup members’ motives are destructive (Hornsey, Trembath and Gunthorpe 2004; Hornsey, Grice, Jetten, Paulsen, & Callan, 2007; Adelman and Dasgupta 2018). We test whether protest framing signaling constructive motives makes citizens of the target state more likely to accept the demands of foreign protesters, reducing the outgroup criticism backlash effect. We propose a multi-site study in Israel, China, and the United States.