Online Self-Moderation in Response to Regime Repression and Strength Signaling

• In Event: Digital Media, Repression and State Power

Abstract

Social media has become a crucial arena for political opposition in autocracies, and in turn, autocrats have adapted by introducing costly barriers to deter citizens from political engagement online. What happens when the regime does not put up actual barriers but rather puts deterrence signals in place? We exploit the temporal variation in Russian 'foreign agent' labeling to investigate how signals of repression and regime strength impact political expression online in 1) the YouTube content produced by those labeled as political pariahs, and 2) user engagement with the ‘tainted’ content. To do this we employ a staggered difference-in-differences design on transcriptions of videos posted by YouTubers designated as ‘foreign agents’ in Russia (>217,000 videos), and the adjacent comments left by viewers (>70,000,000 comments). Preliminary findings suggest that content labeled as politically deviant by the regime reduces comment engagement, but increases the use of symbols (emojis, etc.) in user comments. These results indicate that regime deterrence signals can be effective in stifling online engagement with politically sensitive content but may inadvertently foster political backlash and dissent that eludes easy detection by the regime. This has important implications for understanding the limitations of digital technologies as tools for authoritarian regimes on the one hand, as well as for pro-democratic movements on the other.

Authors

• Kristina Aleksandrovna Pedersen, University of Copenhagen

• Joshua A. Tucker, New York University