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Segment and Rule: Modern Censorship in Authoritarian Regimes

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  • Heo, Kun
  • Zerbini, Antoine

Abstract

We analyze the incentives of authoritarian regimes to segment access to censored content through technology. Citizens choose whether to pay to access censored online content at a cost fixed by the regime: the firewall. A low firewall segments access and generates more compliance than full censorship - a high firewall - ever could. Regime opponents self-select into consuming censored content, and comply conditional on positive independent reporting. Regime supporters exclusively consume state propaganda, which secures their compliance. This segment-and-rule strategy can be engineered by making local news outlets uninformative, or by affecting the intrinsic benefit from access.

Suggested Citation

  • Heo, Kun & Zerbini, Antoine, 2023. "Segment and Rule: Modern Censorship in Authoritarian Regimes," SocArXiv np2j8_v1, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:np2j8_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/np2j8_v1
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