Quarterly Journal of Political Science > Vol 13 > Issue 1

Can You Hear Me Now? How Communication Technology Affects Protest and Repression

Darin Christensen, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, darinc@luskin.ucla.edu , Francisco Garfias, University of California, San Diego, USA, fgarfias@ucsd.edu
 
Suggested Citation
Darin Christensen and Francisco Garfias (2018), "Can You Hear Me Now? How Communication Technology Affects Protest and Repression", Quarterly Journal of Political Science: Vol. 13: No. 1, pp 89-117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00016129

Publication Date: 29 Mar 2018
© 2018 D. Christensen and F. Garfias
 
Subjects
Comparative politics,  Game theory,  Social movements,  Collective action
 
Keywords
Social movementsCollective actionComparative politicsGame theory
 

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In this article:
Extant Work on the Coordination and Containment of Protest 
Coordination of Protests, Repression, and Escalation 
Empirical Strategy 
Data 
Results 
Conclusion 
References 

Abstract

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.

DOI:10.1561/100.00016129