CPO-3034 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: De Jure, Collective Action
Document Summary
Truth replaced by silence: an internet experiment on private censorship in russia. Authoritarian regimes can use public acts of repression to inform private actors about what types of speech might be punished. These acts encourage private actors to censor not only themselves but also other private actors, a behavior we call regime-induced private censorship. Our paper is the first to experimentally examine the targets of private censorship in an authoritarian regime. We conducted an internet experiment in russia to investigate the private censorship behavior of private media firms and find that media firms censor third-party messages that include anti- regime language, calls for political or non-political collective action, or both. Our findings demonstrate the importance of forms of censorship other than state censorship in authoritarian regimes. Finally, we contribute to the theoretical literature on censorship by offering a novel tripartite conceptualization of censorship that distinguishes between state censorship, self- censorship, and private censorship.
