Can You Hear Me Now? How Communication Technology Affects Protest and Repression
Open accessAbstract
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.
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Information and communication technology, especially many-to-many platforms like Twitter and Facebook, can facilitate the quick and public dissemination of information about anticipated or ongoing collective action.
“Third, information and communication technology (ICT), and especially many-to-many platforms like Twitter and Facebook, can facilitate the quick and public dissemination of information about anticipated or ongoing collective action (Christensen and Garfias 2018; Clarke and Kocak 2019; Enikolopov, Makarine, and Petrova 2020; Steinert-Threlkeld 2017).”
From Coordinated Dis-Coordination (2024) · cites this paper as Christensen and Garfias 2018
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- Authors
- Christensen, D., & Garfias, F.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Venue
- Quarterly Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Emerald
- Published
- 2018-03-29
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 89-117
- ISSN
- 1554-0626 (ISSN-L)
- 1554-0634
- PMC
- PMC6461378
- OpenAlex
- W2240568851
- Cited by
- 72
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 14.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Quarterly Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041022)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political and Social Issues
- Keywords
- communication technology, protest, repression, collective action, coordination costs, information dissemination, social movements, Arab Spring, network effects
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