This study investigates the impact of imprisoning Saudi activists for online dissent. Analyzing over 300 million tweets and Google search data from 2010-2017, we find two key effects.
First, repression appears to deter individual imprisoned Saudis significantly. Those behind bars are notably less active in posting critical content on social media.
Second, overall online dissent does not decrease substantially despite these arrests. In fact, Twitter followers of the targeted individuals often show increased engagement with dissenting themes, including criticism of the ruling family and calls for regime change.
Interestingly, repression itself becomes a catalyst: it draws public attention to the causes being protested and appears to galvanize rather than discourage political expression more broadly.
These findings highlight an important tension in digital authoritarianism strategies. While imprisonments successfully reduce individual dissenters' online activities, they fail to suppress discourse among followers who continue engaging with controversial topics.
| How Saudi Crackdowns Fail to Silence Online Dissent was authored by Jennifer Pan and Alexandra Siegel. It was published by Cambridge in APSR in 2020. |
