A cork or a faucet? Modelling effects of internet shutdowns on protest dynamics through regression analysis

The influence of online communications on the dynamics of protest activity holds one of the central places in modern political communication research. Internet continues to play an important role in protest mobilization, and authorities of different countries employ a broad repertoire of strategies aimed at reducing its effectiveness as a protesters’ communication channel.
This paper aims to evaluate whether internet shutdowns reduce or increase protest activity in the short term. Recent theoretical and empirical accounts provide conflicting evidence on the matter, and we attempt to resolve some of these debates. Relying on fine-grained data on internet shutdowns and protest episodes from Indian districts in 2016–2022, the authors model the effects of shutdowns at the district i and day t on the expected number of protest episodes at the same district and day t + 1 by employing negative binomial regression.
The findings provide compelling evidence that shutdowns increase the number of protest events in a district, casting doubt on shutdowns’ potential to reduce protest activity. Nonetheless, the authors also encourage researchers to take caution in interpreting these findings, as the authors don’t have the data on the actual protest attendance. The effects of shutdowns might be more nuanced, as they may lead to a greater number of smaller protest episodes and lower overall participation.

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