Modern Communication Technologies, Protests, and Service Blocking

New communication technologies, such as online social networks and instant messaging platforms, are reshaping political dynamics in various countries. We develop a theory of information exchange, protests, and service blocking when citizens use these technologies for coordination of collective action with strategic complementarities. Protesters share the common discontent with the government and observe its repression capacity, but differ in individual protesting risks, and this strategic uncertainty hinders coordination. In the most informative equilibrium of the communication stage, cheap talk information exchange via modern digital services enables protesters to resolve this uncertainty and facilitate protest coordination. To counteract the protests, governments can respond by blocking communication services. We show that governments practice service blocking when public discontent reaches intermediate levels, i.e., neither reflecting broad policy satisfaction nor constituting extreme grievance; yet this nonlinear blocking pattern attenuates as the common costs of protest participation rise or as governmental blocking costs escalate. We provide high-frequency within-country empirical evidence consistent with our theoretical predictions. We document a statistically significant inverse U-shaped relationship between expected citizen discontent and the likelihood of social networking and instant messaging service blocking. This nonlinear effect is identified in countries with lower physical costs of protesting, proxied by lower levels of police presence.