Speaker: Sorenie Gudissa
Title: Internet Shutdowns and Political Coordination
Abstract: Autocratic regimes increasingly rely on internet shutdowns during periods of political unrest. This paper studies internet shutdowns through the lens of global games, where collective action depends on the information environment that allows individuals to form beliefs about each other’s behavior. I model a shutdown as an exogenous disruption to shared political information and derive testable implications for how changes in public signal precision affect coordination. I test these implications using high-frequency Facebook data surrounding Ethiopia’s nationwide internet shutdown from June 28 to July 23, 2020, tracking political engagement before, during, and after the disruption. Preliminary evidence shows that the shutdown sharply alters the information environment, shifting engagement away from locally connected users toward external and diaspora sources. The paper uses these patterns to study how disruptions to shared information affect signal precision and coordinated political behavior under authoritarian rule.
Maggie Hendrix
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