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Can You Hear Me Now? How Communication Technology Affects Protest and Repression

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  • Christensen, Darin
  • Garfias, Francisco

Abstract

Commentators covering recent social movements, such as the Arab Spring, commonly claim that cell phones enable protests. Yet, existing empirical work does not conclusively support this contention: some studies find that these technologies actually reduce collective action; many others struggle to overcome the selection problems that dog observational research. We propose two mechanisms through which cell phones affect protests: (1) by enabling communication among would-be protesters, cell phones lower coordination costs; and (2) these technologies broadcast information about whether a protest is repressed. Knowing that a larger audience now witnesses and may be angered by repression, governments refrain from squashing demonstrations, further lowering the cost of protesting. We evaluate these mechanisms using high-resolution global data on the expansion of cell phone coverage and incidence of protest from 2007 to 2014. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate that cell phone coverage increases the probability of protest by over half the mean. Consistent with our second mechanism, we also find that gaining coverage has a larger effect when it connects a locality to a large proportion of other citizens.

Suggested Citation

  • Christensen, Darin & Garfias, Francisco, 2018. "Can You Hear Me Now? How Communication Technology Affects Protest and Repression," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 13(1), pages 89-117, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00016129
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00016129
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2024. "The Political Economics of Non-democracy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 594-636, June.
    2. Donati, Dante, 2023. "Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    3. Leopoldo Fergusson & Carlos Molina, 2020. "Facebook Causes Protests," HiCN Working Papers 323, Households in Conflict Network.
    4. Boris Ginzburg & José-Alberto Guerra, 2021. "Guns, pets, and strikes: an experiment on identity and political action," Documentos CEDE 19932, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    5. Gisli Gylfason, 2023. "From Tweets to the Streets: Twitter and Extremist Protests in the United States," PSE Working Papers halshs-04188189, HAL.
    6. Nicholas Francis Havey, 2020. "Partisan public health: how does political ideology influence support for COVID-19 related misinformation?," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 319-342, November.
    7. Boxell, Levi & Steinert-Threlkeld, Zachary, 2022. "Taxing dissent: The impact of a social media tax in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).

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