Patterns in the Silence: Understanding the Differences in the Intent, Intensity, and Reach of State-Induced Internet Shutdowns

Abstract

Disrupting digital networks has quickly become a core strategy within autocratic governance, critical for effectively stifling dissent and preventing anti-regime mobilisation. However, the scope within which one achieves such disruption is broad. Treating such a strategy as a monolithic behaviour, therefore, would be a mistake, as there is substantial variation in how states utilise and harness this phenomenon, as well as to what ends. Yet, while all events are unique, it would be equally misguided to treat shutdowns as an endlessly fragmented series of isolated, idiosyncratic events outside of a broader understanding of repression. This study theoretically systematises and empirically demonstrates how internet shutdowns can be understood as existing within patterned but flexible dimensions of repressive intensity, distribution and precision. These dimensions recognise the shared modalities, operational logics, and functions of shutdowns across cases, allowing for the development of differentiation between them.