Repertoires of Online and Offline Protest Repression in Autocracies

• In Event: Democracy, Autocracy and the Internet

Abstract

How do authoritarian governments maintain political power in an age where their opponents are not afraid to incite mass unrest with the help of social media? Important recent research has studied how protest movements have integrated online tools into their resistance strategies. But governments are increasingly making use of online spaces to publicly justify their repressive responses and stimulate counter-mobilization. In this paper, we turn to the Russian case to study in-depth how online and offline strategies are coordinated so as to stifle mass protest while simultaneously bolstering the regime’s legitimacy. In early March of 2017, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny published an hour long YouTube video documenting extensive corrupt practices of prime minister Medvedev. The video sparked widespread outrage, causing Medvedev’s approval ratings to drop by more than ten percentage points. We empirically investigate the repertoire of actions launched by different sectors of the Russian government in response to the ensuring waves of large-scale anti-corruption protests. We study the social media activity of both the President and Prime Minister, who are both very active on various platforms. Offline, we analyze strategies of preventive repression, such as officially denying permissions for demonstrations, as well as reactive repression, such as arrests of protesters. We find that the government response to the ensuing protests was nuanced, sought to isolate blame on Medvedev, and synchronized preventive repression with a clear narrative on social media. The results have important implications for our understanding of authoritarian resilience in the context of increasingly networked protest.

Authors

• Anita R. Gohdes, Hertie School

• Katerina Tertytchnaya, University College London