Political Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: The Spatial-Temporal Dimension of Trouble

Abstract

Contemporary authoritarian states seek to foster enough political self-censorship to maintain order, but not so much as to deprive themselves of valuable intelligence. We analyze how ordinary Chinese, who, we assume, are risk-averse and want mostly to avoid trouble, self-censor differently, depending on state cues about political context. We identify politically sensitive intersections of time and place that raise the stakes for political expression because the state’s obsession with order is particularly acute then and there. We expect ordinary citizens will self-censor more at these focal points than at other times and places. We leverage geotagged smartphone posts of Beijing netizens on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, to estimate precisely if, when, where, and how citizens choose to engage in political talk. We use a difference-in-differences strategy comparing smartphone talk at and away from politically sensitive spatial-temporal intersections. We find netizens self-censor political disapproval significantly more at these intersections.