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When Do Private Actors Engage in Censorship? Evidence From a Correspondence Experiment with Russian Private Media Firms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2021

Quintin H. Beazer ,
Charles D. Crabtree Open the ORCID record for Charles D. Crabtree [Opens in a new window] ,
Christopher J. Fariss  and
Holger L. Kern
Quintin H. Beazer
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Charles D. Crabtree*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
Christopher J. Fariss
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Holger L. Kern
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In authoritarian regimes, repression encourages private actors to censor not only themselves, but also other private actors—a behavior we call “regime-induced private censorship.” We present the results of a correspondence experiment conducted in Russia that investigates the censorship behavior of private media firms. We find that such firms censor third-party advertisements that include anti-regime language, calls for political or non-political collective action, or both. Our results demonstrate the significance of other types of censorship besides state censorship in an important authoritarian regime and contribute to the rapidly growing literature on authoritarian information control.

Keywords

information manipulationcensorshipRussiaauthoritarian regimes
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 1790 - 1809
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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