Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP16731
Authors: Yanhui Wu; David Strömberg; Bei Qin
Abstract: This paper studies how social media affect protest dynamics in China during 2009-2017. Based on 13.2 billion microblog posts, we use tweets and retweets to measure social media communication across cities and exploit its rapid expansion for identification. We find that despite strict government control, Chinese social media have a sizeable effect on the geographic spread of protests and strikes. While the spread effect is short-lived and predominantly between similar events, social media considerably increase the scope of protests. Further empirical results and textual analysis show that the effect is likely to be driven by tacit coordination and emotional reactions rather than explicit coordination and sharing tactics. Our study sheds light on the debate regarding whether social media help strengthen authoritarian regimes.
Keywords: N/A
JEL Codes: N/A
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Social media connectivity (Z13) | Probability of protests occurring (D79) |
| Social media connectivity (Z13) | Probability of strikes occurring (C46) |
| Protest in one city within two days (R23) | Likelihood of protest in another city (R23) |
| Social media connectivity (Z13) | Scope of protests (D72) |
| Increased censorship (Y50) | Reduced spread of protests (D74) |