[x-pubpol] Why censoring social media might mean more-violent protests

[Joly MacFie]

http://gigaom.com/cloud/why-censoring-social-media-might-mean-more-violent-protests/

Cutting off access to social media during times of civil unrest might
actually lead to more violence than no censorship at all. This is according
to two European researchers who built a computer model showing that high
levels of censorship (e.g., Hosni Mubarak’s decision to turn off Egypt’s
Internet <http://gigaom.com/2011/01/28/how-egypt-switched-off-the-internet/>)
result in sustained periods of violent activity, whereas no censorship
leads to spiky periods of violent outbursts broken up by relatively long
periods of relative calm.

The authors, Antonio A. Casilli and Paola Tubaro, detail their findings in
a paper titled “Social Media Censorship in Times of Political Unrest – A
Social Simulation Experiment with the UK Riots,” which appears in the July
issue of the Bulletin of Sociological Methodology (it’s not yet available
online, but an advance version is available
here<http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/68/23/17/PDF/CasilliTubaro_ICCU_HAL.pdf>
).

The research is especially timely given the attention social media has
received<http://gigaom.com/2011/11/02/social-media-tipping-points-and-revolutions/>
during
the revolutions and violent protests that have occurred worldwide over the
past couple years. As the authors note when discussing the U.K.
government’s response to riots in August 2011, “[T]he same information
technologies that had been presented as tools of liberation in the height
of the Arab Spring, have been portrayed as threats to the very values of
freedom and peace that Western governments allegedly stand for.”

The authors attribute their findings (albeit computer-generated) largely to
the idea of “vision,” which plays a pivotal role in sociological
experiments trying to determine how individuals act during times of protest
or rioting. Put simply, less censorship means more vision, so citizens
(called “agents” in the computer model) know what’s going on around them
and can act in more uniform and rational manners. More censorship means
less vision, so citizens are less aware of their surroundings and tend to
act randomly.

 <http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/socioviolence.jpg>
Overstating the importance of social media?

However, while this research is both interesting and important, it might
not tell the whole story about patterns of violence during times of
unrest. As the authors note, factors such as economic hardship and a loss
of government legitimacy may also determine whether uprising become violent
— perhaps much more so than whether protestors have the ability to
coordinate via Twitter.

A *Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/18/england-rioters-young-poor-unemployed>
*analysis of individuals arrested during the U.K.
riots<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/18/england-rioters-young-poor-unemployed>
in
August, for example, found that rioters were overwhelmingly “young, poor
and unemployed” (read “more disenfranchised than ordinary citizens”). And
even before the advent of social media, non-violent protests have been the
norm in the relatively stable and rich United States for decades, with only
minimal violence breaking out during the Occupy protests that took hold in
dozens of cities nationwide during 2011.

Another factor, the authors mention, is that keeping the web open also
keeps it open to law-enforcement agencies, which can keep an eye on social
media channels to gain intelligence into what protestors are planning. In
Syria’s revolution, it’s worth noting, deciding to engage in social media
efforts against the government can have life-or-death
consequences<http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/02/syria_uprising_twitter_and_social_media_revolution_fatigue_.html>
.

Certainly, there’s room for more research to determine the factors that
lead to individual protests shaping up as they do. The advent of big data
techniques will make it easier than ever to analyze the mountains of web,
socio-economic and geo-political data that might help uncover more answers.
But Casilli, Tubaro and their computer model present a good case for not
underestimating the role of access to social media.

“In the absence of robust indicators as to the rebelliousness of a given
society,” their paper concludes, “the choice of not restricting social
communication turns out to be a judicious one for avoiding the surrender of
democratic values and freedom of expression for an illusory sense of
security.”

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