Consultation and Selective Censorship in China

Gueorguiev, Dimitar D.; Malesky, Edmund J.

doi:10.1086/704785

Cited by 19 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Political Science Research and Methods 13 to question the political legitimacy of the regime or report on protests and repression. By establishing these relationships, my study provides further evidence on how authoritarian regimes use modern technologies to increase information friction beyond the widely-studied case of China (e.g., King et al, 2013;Roberts, 2018;Gueorguiev and Malesky, 2019). In an electoral autocracy, it seems that not only protest and repression events are censor-worthy but also reports on the opposition and other topics that challenge the regime's political legitimacy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

“…Previous literature on information control in the digital age describes how governments censor online (Deibert et al, 2008), finds macro-level evidence that countries censor political and news websites (Pearce et al, 2017), and shows that domestic and regional unrest increase online censorship efforts in autocracies (Hellmeier, 2016). King et al (2013) found that social media posts in China are deleted when they contain collective action potential, while recent studies suggest that posts that are critical of the government may also be censored (Gueorguiev and Malesky, 2019). Other research has emphasized that modern-day authoritarian governments do not only rely on deletion to control information, but use the Internet and social media to distract from sensitive content (King et al, 2017;Spaiser et al, 2017;Munger et al, 2018) or to identify and harass opposition actors (Pan and Siegel, 2020;Xu, 2020;Pearce and Kendzior, 2012).…”

Section: Why Launch Dos Attacks?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Hot topics: Denial-of-Service attacks on news websites in autocracies

Lutscher

2021

PSRM

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Most authoritarian countries censor the press. As a response, many opposition and independent news outlets have found refuge on the Internet. Despite the global character of the Internet, news outlets are vulnerable to censorship in cyberspace. This study investigates Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on news websites in Venezuela and details how news reporting is related to DoS attacks in an attempt to censor content. For this empirical test, I monitored 19 Venezuelan news websites from November 2017 until June 2018 and continuously retrieved their content and status codes to infer DoS attacks. Statistical analyses show that news content correlates to DoS attacks. In the Venezuelan context, these news topics appear to be not only on protest and repression but also on opposition actors or other topics that question the legitimacy of the regime. By establishing these relationships, this study deepens our understanding of how modern technologies are used as censorship tools.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Section: Why Launch Dos Attacks?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hot topics: Denial-of-Service attacks on news websites in autocracies

Lutscher

2021

PSRM

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“…In fact, autocrats sometimes encourage certain types of criticism to gather information about corruption and the performance of local officials (Egorov, Guriev, and Sonin 2009; Lorentzen 2014; Malesky and Schuler 2010). Critical speech can also provide valuable information about citizens' grievances (Dimitrov 2014; Gueorguiev and Malesky 2019). As long as it is not coupled with collective action, criticism might allow citizens to “blow off some steam,” thus contributing to the regime's long-term stability.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

When Do Private Actors Engage in Censorship? Evidence From a Correspondence Experiment with Russian Private Media Firms

Beazer

Crabtree

Fariss

et al. 2021

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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In authoritarian regimes, repression encourages private actors to censor not only themselves, but also other private actors—a behavior we call “regime-induced private censorship.” We present the results of a correspondence experiment conducted in Russia that investigates the censorship behavior of private media firms. We find that such firms censor third-party advertisements that include anti-regime language, calls for political or non-political collective action, or both. Our results demonstrate the significance of other types of censorship besides state censorship in an important authoritarian regime and contribute to the rapidly growing literature on authoritarian information control.

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“…Its system of bureaucratic rewards incentivizes local state responsiveness to complaints that ordinary citizens express through new conduits, such as online petition platforms that go right to Beijing and electronic letters to mailboxes of local leaders. 8 The state also engages in online consultation campaigns that solicit public input, even disapproving input, on policy proposals (Truex, 2014; Chen & Xu, 2017; Gueorguiev & Malesky, 2019). These channels reduce the information poverty (Egorov et al, 2009; Wintrobe, 1998) that is endemic to a state without electoral accountability or guaranteed press freedoms.…”

Section: Political Expression and Social Order In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: The Spatial-Temporal Dimension of Trouble

Chang

Manion

2021

Comparative Political Studies

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We theorize and measure a situational self-censorship that varies across spatial-temporal political contexts. Schelling’s insight that distinctive times and places function as focal points has generated a literature explaining how activists coordinate for protest in authoritarian states. Our population of interest is not activists but ordinary citizens, who, we assume, are risk-averse and prefer to avoid trouble. Focal points rally activists for political expression. By contrast, we theorize, ordinary citizens exercise greater than usual political self-censorship at focal points, to avoid punishment as troublemakers. We test our theory by leveraging geotagged smartphone posts of Beijing netizens on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, to estimate precisely if, when, where, and how citizens engage in political talk. We use a difference-in-differences strategy that compares smartphone political talk at and away from focal places before and after focal times. We find netizens self-censor political talk significantly more at potentially troublesome spatial-temporal focal points.

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Consultation and Selective Censorship in China

Cited by 19 publications

References 11 publications

Hot topics: Denial-of-Service attacks on news websites in autocracies

Hot topics: Denial-of-Service attacks on news websites in autocracies

When Do Private Actors Engage in Censorship? Evidence From a Correspondence Experiment with Russian Private Media Firms

Political Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: The Spatial-Temporal Dimension of Trouble

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