https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0376-5776
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ABSTRACT
The past three decades have witnessed a rapid global uptake of digital media. Does an increase in internet access lead to more anti-government protests globally, in both democracies and non-democracies? Has the role of the internet changed over time from benefiting the opposition to benefiting the regime? We use time-series cross-national data and negative binomial regressions to model protest data in 151 countries from 1990 to 2020. By leveraging change in the development of digital information globally, the results show that increases in internet penetration and mobile cellular subscription rates increase the number of anti-government protests in non-democracies in the period from 1990 to 2010, but not among a subsample of democracies. After 2010, increases in internet penetration rates did not affect the number of protests in either democracies or non-democracies. The use of cellular internet continues to have a small positive effect on protest frequency after 2010. We also test the government's internet censorship efforts as a mechanism for decreasing information access and diminishing mobilization. Results suggest authoritarian regimes modified their strategies over time, more effectively using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to quell anti-government protests using digital repression and information control consistent with the theory of informational autocracy.
Disclosure statement
The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Data availability statement
Data used in this analysis and statistical code will be available on Harvard’s Dataverse.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Kemp, “Digital 2022.”
2 Shahbaz, Funk, and Vesteinsson, “Freedom on the Net 2022: Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet.”
3 Manacorda and Tesei, “Liberation Technology”; Zhuravskaya, Petrova, and Enikolopov, “Political Effects of the Internet and Social Media.”
4 Boulianne, “Twenty Years of Digital Media Effects on Civic and Political Participation”; Enikolopov et al., “Social Image, Networks, and Protest Participation”; Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets”; Shirky, Here Comes Everybody.
5 Chadwick, The Hybrid Media System; Morozov, “Liberation Technology”; Vanderhill, Autocracy and Resistance in the Internet Age; Earl, Maher, and Pan, “The Digital Repression of Social Movements, Protest, and Activism.”
6 Lorenz-Spreen et al., “A Systematic Review of Worldwide Causal and Correlational Evidence on Digital Media and Democracy.”
7 Boulianne, “Social Media Use and Participation”; Skoric et al., “Social Media and Citizen Engagement.”
8 Lorenz-Spreen et al., “A Systematic Review of Worldwide Causal and Correlational Evidence on Digital Media and Democracy.”
9 Bekmagambetov et al., “Critical Social Media Information Flows”; Enikolopov et al., “Social Image, Networks, and Protest Participation.”
10 Manacorda and Tesei, “Liberation Technology”; Qin, Strömberg, and Wu, “Social Media, Information Networks, and Protests in China.”
11 Angrist and Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics; Pearl, Causality.
12 Lorenz-Spreen et al., “A Systematic Review of Worldwide Causal and Correlational Evidence on Digital Media and Democracy.”
13 Larson, “Controlling Social Desirability Bias”; Theocharis and Lowe, “Does Facebook Increase Political Participation?”; Tolbert and McNeal, “Unraveling the Effects of the Internet on Political Participation?”; Vaccari and Valeriani, Outside the Bubble.
14 Boulianne, “Social Media Use and Participation.”
15 Lorenz-Spreen et al., “A Systematic Review of Worldwide Causal and Correlational Evidence on Digital Media and Democracy.”
16 Weidmann and Espen Geelmuyden Rød, The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies.
17 Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets.”
18 Weidmann and Espen Geelmuyden Rød, The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies.
19 Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets.”
20 Whitacre, Gallardo, and Strover, “Broadband׳s Contribution to Economic Growth in Rural Areas.”
21 Mossberger, Tolbert, and LaCombe, Choosing the Future.
22 Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets.”
23 Clark and Regan, “Mass Mobilization Protest Data V4.”
24 Earl, Maher, and Pan, “The Digital Repression of Social Movements, Protest, and Activism.”
25 Guriev and Treisman, “Informational Autocrats.”
26 Deibert and Rohozinski, “Liberation vs. Control.”
27 Vanderhill, Autocracy and Resistance in the Internet Age.
28 Weidmann and Espen Geelmuyden Rød, The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies.
29 Washington Post, “Opinion | Can Elon Musk’s Satellites Beat Iranian Internet Blackouts?”
30 Chadwick, The Hybrid Media System.
31 Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.
32 Morozov, The Net Delusion.
33 Ibid., 89.
34 Deibert and Rohozinski, “Liberation vs. Control,” 44.
35 Vanderhill, Autocracy and Resistance in the Internet Age.
36 Ibid.
37 Shirky, Here Comes Everybody.
38 Vanderhill, Autocracy and Resistance in the Internet Age.
39 Earl, Maher, and Pan, “The Digital Repression of Social Movements, Protest, and Activism.”
40 Feldstein, The Rise of Digital Repression; Guriev and Treisman, “Informational Autocrats”; Lankina, Watanabe, and Netesova, “How Russian Media Control, Manipulate, and Leverage Public Discontent”; Roberts, Censored; Vanderhill, Autocracy and Resistance in the Internet Age; Way and Levitsky, “The Dynamics of Autocratic Coercion after the Cold War”; Zhuravskaya, Petrova, and Enikolopov, “Political Effects of the Internet and Social Media.”
41 Earl, Maher, and Pan, “The Digital Repression of Social Movements, Protest, and Activism.”
42 Howells and Henry, “Varieties of Digital Authoritarianism”; Keremoğlu and Weidmann, “How Dictators Control the Internet”; Vendil Pallin, “Internet Control through Ownership.”
43 Shahbaz, Funk, and Vesteinsson, “Freedom on the Net 2022: Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet.”
44 Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets.”
45 Feldstein, The Rise of Digital Repression; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, How Dictatorships Work.
46 Pew Research Center, “Social Media Fact Sheet.”
47 Foote et al., “Cyber Conflict at the Intersection of Information Operations: Cyber-Enabled Information Operations, 2000–2016.”
48 Howells and Henry, “Varieties of Digital Authoritarianism.”
49 Zassoursky, Media and Power in Post-Soviet Russia.
50 Sivetc, “State Regulation of Online Speech in Russia”; Vartanova, “Media Ownership and Concentration in Russia.”
51 Howells and Henry, “Varieties of Digital Authoritarianism.”
52 Oates, Revolution Stalled.
53 Freedom House, “Russia.”
54 Shahbaz, Funk, and Vesteinsson, “Freedom on the Net 2022: Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet.”
55 Clark and Regan, “Mass Mobilization Protest Data V4.”
56 Weidmann and Espen Geelmuyden Rød, The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies.
57 The World Bank, “Individuals Using the Internet (% of Population).”
58 Coppedge et al., “V-Dem Dataset 2021 V11.1.”
59 Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets.”
60 The value is based on the average marginal effects graphs.
61 Lorenz-Spreen et al., “A Systematic Review of Worldwide Causal and Correlational Evidence on Digital Media and Democracy.”
62 Earl, Maher, and Pan, “The Digital Repression of Social Movements, Protest, and Activism.”
63 Ibid.
64 Hobbs and Roberts, “How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information.”
65 Howard and Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave?
66 Ibid.; Oates, Revolution Stalled; Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets.”
67 Guriev and Treisman, “Informational Autocrats.”
68 Howard and Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave?; Oates, Revolution Stalled.
69 Guriev and Treisman, “Informational Autocrats.”
70 Earl, Maher, and Pan, “The Digital Repression of Social Movements, Protest, and Activism.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Daria Kuznetsova
Daria Kuznetsova is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Iowa. Her research lies at the intersection of comparative politics and mass communication and investigates how different political actors exploit, leverage, and seek control of digital communication spaces during contentious politics. Additionally, Daria concentrates on the role social media, disinformation, and propaganda play in authoritarian politics.
Caroline Tolbert
Caroline J. Tolbert is a University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. Her work is driven by an interest in strengthening democracies and increasing political participation. With Karen Mossberger and colleagues, she is coauthor of four books on digital media and society including Choosing the Future: Technology and Opportunity in Communities (2021, Oxford) and Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society and Participation (2008, MIT). Choosing the Future was the winner of the 2022 Goldsmith Award for the best academic book from the Shorenstein Center on the Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard.