Terrorism and internet censorship
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3917461 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen A Meserve (0000-0002-1113-5141, Northern Arizona University), Daniel Pemstein (0000-0002-1144-6337, North Dakota State University) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 752-763 |
| Publication date | 2020-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Peace Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343320959369 |
| OpenAlex | W3096824596 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 26 |
The internet provides a powerful tool to terror organizations, enhancing their public messaging, recruitment ability, and internal communication. In turn, governments have increasingly moved to disrupt terror organizations' internet communications, and even democracies now routinely work to censor terrorist propaganda, and related political messaging, in the name of national security. We argue that democratic states respond to terror attacks by increasing internet censorship and broadening their capacity to limit the digital dissemination of information. This article builds on previous work suggesting this relationship, substantially improving measurement and estimation strategy. We use latent variable modeling techniques to create a new measure of internet censorship, cross nationally and over time, from internet firm transparency reports, and compare this measure to an expert-survey based indicator. Leveraging both measures, we use a variety of panel specifications to establish that, in democracies, increases in terror predict surges in digital censorship. Finally, we examine the posited relationship using synthetic control methods in a liberal democracy that experienced a large shock in terror deaths, France, showing that digital censorship ramped up after several large terrorist attacks
Censorship · Civil liberties · Computer security · Democracy · Internet privacy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Terrorism · The Internet · Transparency (behavior) · World Wide Web · Census and Population Estimation · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Access Controlled
Access Denied
The Global War for Internet Governance
The V-Dem Measurement Model
Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies
Inference from Iterative Simulation Using Multiple Sequences
Twitter and Tear Gas
Mostly Harmless Econometrics
Regimes of the World (RoW)
The internet and state repression
Coercion, capital, and European states, 990–1990
Google Politics
The Correlates of Media Freedom
Corrupting the Cyber-Commons
Repression Technology
Explosive connections? Mass media, social media, and the geography of collective violence in African states
Coordination and security
Empowering activists or autocrats? The Internet in authoritarian regimes
Pulling the plug
How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression
Spontaneous Collective Action
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |