Description
Governments around the world often restrict access to information, particularly during times of political contention. While political scientists have extensively researched the effects of increased access to internet services, especially social media, on protest behavior and have recently turned their attention to the effects of online censorship, less is known about how circumventing temporary disruptions in online access affects such behavior. We systematically examine the effects of bypassing online censorship on offline protest behavior, leveraging novel data on Virtual Private Network (VPN) usage across all nationwide elections and coups d’état of African autocracies between 2017 and 2021. Using two-way fixed effects (TWFE) regressions, we analyze changes in protest behavior following censorship and its circumvention. Our findings reveal that censorship alone does not significantly affect protest behavior, but when individuals circumvent these restrictions, the likelihood of protests increases significantly. This paper highlights the critical role of circumvention of online censorship in shaping offline protests, providing a comprehensive evaluation of its effects across various model specifications and robustness checks, including instrumental variable techniques.
