How Internet Outages Shape Public Opinion in Africa

• In Event: Internet Policy and Governance

Abstract

Shutting down Internet connectivity has become a popular instrument for repressive governments to silence dissent and uprisings in a digitized world. While authorities seek to suppress opposition forces or protest activities by imposing Internet outages, we know little about how the public responds to such incisive measures. In this paper, I argue that Internet disruptions allegedly initiated by the government lower the public’s approval for the current leadership, as citizens blame the government for the service outages. For the analysis, I combine fine-grained data on Internet outages with survey data from the Afrobarometer and apply an “unexpected event during survey design.”

Author

• Rebecca Strauch, University of Konstanz