The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies

“Other work finds that digital repression has allowed states to respond to (or even pre-empt) protests, identify key dissidents, and deter diffusion faster than ever before ( 26 ).”

“Weidmann and Rød (2019) study the effect of internet technology on mobilization for protest and analyze how conventional tactics (violent repression of protest) interact with online mobilization.”

“To address this concern, we conduct a set of robustness checks using an extended version of the protest data set that includes the augmented ICEWS data, data from Lankina and Tertytchnaya (2019), and the Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database (Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“ICT has facilitated the spread of popular sentiments and provided new tools for collective action, but it has also bolstered governments ’ capacities to intervene in communications and social networks (Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“…that collect information on political, or specifically electoral, protests, LAruPED is very broad in its thematic scope, as it covers events that are not exclusively political in nature, or centered around national elections (e.g., see Daxecker, Amicarelly, and Jung 2019; Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“This point has been empirically confirmed in a large-n study by Weidmann and Rød (2019, chs 5 and 6), who call it the ‘ protest-reducing effect of internet technology ’ (Weidmann and Rød 2019: 155).”

“Data on pro-government mobilization in a large sample of authoritarian regimes comes from the Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database (MMAD) (Hellmeier et al., 2019; Weidmann and Rød, 2019).”

“However, they should be most consequential in autocratic settings, where regimes control the media and civil society is weak (Enikolopov et al. 2020; Steinert-Threlkeld 2017; Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“As recent work by Weidmann and Rød (2019) suggests, digital technologies function differently depending on the political context in which they are embedded.”

“…which is too highly aggregated, and the Social Conflict Analysis Dataset (SCAD) (Salehyan et al. 2012), NAVCO 3.0 Dataset (Chenoweth, Pinckney, and Lewis 2018), and Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Dataset (Weidmann and Rød 2019), none of which have the necessary temporal and geographic scope.”

“The datasets that rely on wire services – SCAD, NAVCO, and MMAD – have similarly sized reporting gaps.”

“…countries in the period 1990–2015 for practical reasons driven by overlap in 5 Urban organizations may also be more frequent participants because organizations and collective action are more common in cities (Miller & Nicholls, 2013; Nicholls, 2008; Weidmann & Rød, 2018). available events datasets.”

“…resource mobilization, political opportunity, and framing-based explanations are complementary for the occurrence of social protests (Chenoweth & Ulfelder, 2017; Snow et al., 2008; Tarrow, 2011; Weidmann & R ø d, 2019), our focus here is on the role of economic grievances in mobilizing protests.”

“Early research on the Internet and protests argues that “ activists can utilize Internet technology to interact with other like-minded people online ” in order to “ spread information about planned events widely without relying on an existing organizational structure ” (Weidmann and Rod, 2019: 22).”

“Incum-bents can also take over the monitoring structure and subvert its role, using it for censorship or to justify abuses (Weidmann & Rød, 2019; Gohdes, 2020).”

“Issues range from the completeness of coverage, the feasibility of data collection, transparency and the possibility of controlling for reliability (see Weidmann & Rød, 2019, pp. 42–45).”

“…continue to tackle these four dimensions in order to explain a global trend of democratic recession (Abdullah 2020; Hartmann and Noesselt 2019; Weidmann and Rød 2019), conceptualize de fi ning characteristics for hybrid regimes (Ekman 2009), argue for a trend of democratic authoritarianism…”

“Recent research suggests that rising internet use in authoritarian regimes reduces the likelihood of anti-government protest (Weidmann & Rød, 2019) while having no effect on the prospect of democratisation (Weidmann & Rød, 2015).”

“This data includes peaceful and violent protests, including political riots and cases where activists have violently clashed with security forces (Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“When violence is recorded, it is recorded as a binary variable or ordinal, and the ordinal variable is never more than a few values (Chenoweth, Pinckney, and Lewis 2018; Raleigh et al. 2010; Salehyan et al. 2012; Weidmann and Rod 2018).”

“…but these same regimes are continuing to adapt their strategies of political control amid our not-so-new digital environment, and as a result, ICT has proved to be a double-edged sword for dissidents coordinating contention (Earl, Maher, and Pan 2022; Morozov 2012; Weidmann and Rod 2019).”

“Protest participants increasingly rely on social media to learn about events and coordinate action with each other (Tufekci & Wilson, 2012; Weidmann & Rød, 2019).”

“A growing number of studies examines the effects of Internet penetration on democratization (Rød & Weidmann, 2015), political violence (Pierskalla & Hollenbach, 2013) and protest behaviour (Weidmann & Rød, 2019).”

“…indicators of political events at the country level, researchers have collected geographically disaggregated data on civil war violence (Sundberg and Melander 2013), protest (Salehyan et al. 2012; Klein and Regan 2018; Weidmann and Rød 2019), and militarized interstate disputes (Braithwaite 2010).”

“Authoritarian governments have adapted to using digital tools to prevent protests, suppress dissent, and endorse regime supporters (e.g. Feldstein, 2021; Weidmann and Rød, 2019).”

“See our evaluation of four keyword lists, which are reported by Huang et al. (2016), Wang et al. (2016b), Weidmann and Rød (2019), and Kriesi et al. (2019) below in the Results section.”

“This figure is made using the Mass Mobilization in Autocracies (MMAD) dataset [49].”

“The Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database records actor attributes as a string variable at the report level, but the event level version of the dataset omits that variable (Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“Though the public has less opportunity to pressure autocrats, domestic audiences can also threaten leaders ’ survival in autocracies (Bueno De Mesquita et al. 2003), for instance through widespread protest (Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“Protest event data collection efforts that are restricted to certain regime types, such as the Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database, suggest that extant projects may fail to capture country cases that are on the cusp of autocracy or are considered weak democracies (Weidmann & Rød, 2019).”

“Even opposition groups in autocratic countries, where media freedom is limited, can hear about and learn from foreign anti-government movements (Weidmann and Rød, 2019).”

“Nonetheless, the authors make clear that the data set may introduce bias, “as these agencies typically cater to audiences in Western countries and primarily report on events that are of some interest to them” (Weidmann & Rød, 2019, pp. 41–42).”

“More generally, the letter thus supports previous research which shows that media censorship minimizes the liberalization potential of the internet (Rød and Weidmann 2015; Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“The MMAD project, however, provides a detailed justification for its source list.”

“Expanded room for expression provides more opportunities for discontent and resistance [56, 69], thus bringing more threats and crises to the governance of authoritarian regimes [3, 76].”

“…protest events have become common in contemporary protest event dataset creation, including the Count Love project (Leung and Perkins 2021), the POLCON project (Makarov, Lorenzini, and Kriesi 2016), and the Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database (Croicu and Weidmann 2015; Weidmann and Rød 2019).”

“Government-controlled communication can suppress collective unrest (Weidmann and Rød, 2019), for example, through government-produced content (King et al., 2017), fast and pervasive online censorship (Roberts, 2018), or the full shutdown of Internet services (Deibert et al., 2010).”

“…indicates considerable disagreement over whether the internet, information access, and digital tools empower authoritarian rulers or the citizenry (Pearce 2013; Rød and Weidmann 2015; Repnikova and Fang 2018; Weidmann and Rød 2019; Kendall-Taylor, Frantz, and Wright 2020; Choi and Jee 2021).”

“…Con fl ict Observatory, n.d.; Convergne & Snyder, 2015; eyeWitness, n.d.; In Ukraine, 2022; Llamazares & Mulloy, 2014; Masood Alavi et al., 2022; Weidmann & Rød, 2019; further references regarding VR): Ukraine is the number one contributor to the world ’ s development in science and technology…”

“For other important studies, see Ramakrishnan et al. (2014), Lorenzini et al. (2016) and Weidmann and Rød (2019).”

“Indeed, both Kim (2021) and Weidmann and Rød (2019) note that the rise of autocracy is one of the major developments in the period since the Arab Spring.”

“Recently, natural language processing techniques have been adopted in PEA, showing the way for future protest analysis (Hanna, 2014; Kriesi et al., 2020; Weidmann & Rød, 2019).”

“Weidmann and Rød (2019) for instance, offer accounts of how authoritarian regimes scramble to countermobilize against online protests in societies under authoritarian regimes by using the same social network mobilizing strategies.”

“The MMAD-RA includes information on the actors of repression for every anti-regime protest event report in the MMAD Version 1.0 (Weidmann and Rød, 2019, Chapter 4).2 We define repressive actors as organizations or groups commanding physical force as extensions of the government.”

“Although the Mass Mobilization in Autocracies database includes data on PGRs, it does not cover Turkey (Weidmann and Rød 2019), a gap which the TPRPGRD intends to alleviate.”