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Google Politics: The Political Determinants of Internet Censorship in Democracies

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  • Meserve, Stephen A.
  • Pemstein, Daniel

Abstract

The expansion of digital interconnectivity has simultaneously increased individuals’ access to media and presented governments with new opportunities to regulate information flows. As a result, even highly democratic countries now issue frequent censorship and user data requests to digital content providers. We argue that government internet censorship occurs, in part, for political reasons, and seek to identify the conditions under which states censor. We leverage new, cross-nationally comparable, censorship request data, provided by Google, to examine how country characteristics co-vary with governments’ digital censorship activity. Within democracies, we show that governments engage in more digital censorship when internal dissent is present and when their economies produce substantial intellectual property. But these demand mechanisms are modulated by the relative influence that democratic institutions provide to narrow and diffuse interests; in particular, states with proportional electoral institutions censor less.

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  • Meserve, Stephen A. & Pemstein, Daniel, 2018. "Google Politics: The Political Determinants of Internet Censorship in Democracies," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 245-263, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:6:y:2018:i:02:p:245-263_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Stephen A Meserve & Daniel Pemstein, 2020. "Terrorism and internet censorship," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(6), pages 752-763, November.

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