Modern protests, from the Arab Spring to the Gilet Jaune are typically organized, promoted and coordinated via digital technology, but the same tools are equally used by regimes to pump out propaganda and manipulate the public discourse.  Such is the complex world we live in, and a new book from the University of Konstanz explores how dictators navigate this landscape.

“Until a few years ago, there were basically two camps among researchers: those who see the Internet as a powerful tool of liberation, and those who call it a repression technology. We wanted to go beyond this simple distinction: the Internet can have effects in both directions, supporting autocratic regimes, but also catalyzing protest movements,” the author says. “In order to show this, we needed to look more closely than most studies have done so far. So instead of conducting an analysis at the country level, we zoomed in and looked at how Internet connectivity affected the occurrence, but also the duration of protest at the city level.”

They attempted not only to collect data on the nature of political protests in autocratic regimes, but also developed a unique way of gauging Internet penetration at a city-by-city level.  This database, which they’ve called the ‘Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database’, is available to the research community.

Their analysis provides an interesting perspective on the spread of the Internet in autocratic regimes, which unlike democracies exert a large degree of control and influence over its development.  This state-level control gives autocratic governments a range of tools to observe and censor the population, which in the long-term results in lower levels of protest than might otherwise be the case.

Even with this overt level of control however, the book highlights how political mobilization can rapidly spread online once it has been initiated.  It suggests that momentum can be obtained in even the most oppressive regimes.

“All in all, introducing and expanding digital technology in autocratic societies has turned out to be something of a double-edged sword,” the authors say. “The Internet is clearly used as a tool of repression in many autocracies. But it can become a tool of liberation under the right circumstances, too.”