How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information
Open accessAbstract
Conventional wisdom assumes that increased censorship will strictly decrease access to information. We delineate circumstances when increases in censorship expand access to information for a substantial subset of the population. When governments suddenly impose censorship on previously uncensored information, citizens accustomed to acquiring this information will be incentivized to learn methods of censorship evasion. These evasion tools provide continued access to the newly blocked information—and also extend users’ ability to access information that has long been censored. We illustrate this phenomenon using millions of individual-level actions of social media users in China before and after the block of Instagram. We show that the block inspired millions of Chinese users to acquire virtual private networks, and that these users subsequently joined censored websites like Twitter and Facebook. Despite initially being apolitical, these new users began browsing blocked political pages on Wikipedia, following Chinese political activists on Twitter, and discussing highly politicized topics such as opposition protests in Hong Kong.
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China's blocking of Instagram motivated users to bypass other blocks and spurred political interest and critical online discourse.
“Hobbs and Roberts (2018) find that China's blocking of Instagram motivated users to bypass also other blocks and spurred political interest and critical online discourse.”
From How Dictators Control the Internet: A Review Essay (2020) · cites this paper as Hobbs and Roberts, 2018
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- Authors
- HOBBS, W. R., & ROBERTS, M. E.
- Affiliations
- Northeastern University (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Corresponding author
- HOBBS, WILLIAM R.
- ROBERTS, MARGARET E.
- Venue
- American Political Science Review
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2018-04-02
- Volume
- 112
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 621-636
- ISSN
- 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5943
- OpenAlex
- W3125630843
- Cited by
- 241
- References
- 77
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 66 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 51 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 46.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Political Science Review (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- University of California, San Diego
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Law › Freedom of Expression and Defamation
- Keywords
- censorship, access to information, censorship evasion, virtual private networks, social media, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, political activism, Hong Kong protests, Chinese internet users, online political participation
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