How Saudi Crackdowns Fail to Silence Online Dissent
Abstract
Saudi Arabia has imprisoned and tortured activists, religious leaders, and journalists for voicing dissent online. This reflects a growing worldwide trend in the use of physical repression to censor online speech. In this paper, we systematically examine the consequences of imprisoning well-known Saudis for online dissent by analyzing over 300 million tweets as well as detailed Google search data from 2010 to 2017 using automated text analysis and crowd-sourced human evaluation of content. We find that repression deterred imprisoned Saudis from continuing to dissent online. However, it did not suppress dissent overall. Twitter followers of the imprisoned Saudis engaged in more online dissent, including criticizing the ruling family and calling for regime change. Repression drew public attention to arrested Saudis and their causes, and other prominent figures in Saudi Arabia were not deterred by the repression of their peers and continued to dissent online.
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Repression of dissenters can be ineffective even if it does not backfire.
“Finally, Pan and Siegel (2020) suggest that repression of dissenters can also simply be ineffective even if it does not backfire.”
From How Dictators Control the Internet: A Review Essay (2020) · cites this paper as Pan and Siegel, 2020
Mobilization organized through public coordination is repressed using that very same public information.
“research has shown how mobilization organized through public coordination is repressed using that very same public information-for instance, repression is preemptively increased before focal days (Truex 2019); and autocracies censor online calls for collective action (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013), coerce online opinion leaders (Pan and Siegel 2020), and at times, turn off the internet entirely.”
From Coordinated Dis-Coordination (2024) · cites this paper as Pan and Siegel 2020
Cites
How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression
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Self-citationState Repression and Political Order
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“4 For overviews of this literature, see Davenport (2007), Davenport and Inman (2012), and Tilly (2005).”
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“…2017), effects have been found to vary depending on time frame (Rasler 1996), for violent versus nonviolent forms of dissent (Moore 1998), for different individuals (Opp and Gern 1993), for different organizational categories (Davenport 2015), and for different societal categories (Goldstein 1978).”
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Self-citationResilience to Online Censorship
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“Even though some evidence suggests that under certain circumstances awareness of censorship creates chilling effects (e.g., Huang 2015, 2018; Pan & Siegel 2020), awareness of censorship also allows users to find ways to circumvent it incentivize users to seek out information their government has…”
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“…same public information — for instance, repression is preemptively increased before focal days (Truex 2019); and autocra-cies censor online calls for collective action (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013), coerce online opinion leaders (Pan and Siegel 2020), and at times, turn off the internet entirely.”
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“Given the brutality of the Saudi regime offline, its history of repressing online critics (Pan and Siegel, 2020), and the apparent extent of its reach online, this conclusion is understandable.”
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Nationwide shutdowns and government offensives
Gohdes, A. R. (2024) · Repression in the Digital Age · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197743577.003.0005
- Authors
- PAN, J., & SIEGEL, A. A.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Corresponding author
- PAN, JENNIFER
- SIEGEL, ALEXANDRA A.
- Venue
- American Political Science Review
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2019-12-27
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 109-125
- ISSN
- 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5943
- OpenAlex
- W2998440571
- Cited by
- 167
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 33 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 31.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Political Science Review (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Keywords
- online dissent, political repression, Twitter followers, Google search data, regime change, Saudi Arabia, human rights violations, social media
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