How Exile Shapes Online Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela

Abstract

How does exile affect online dissent? By internationalizing activists’ networks and removing them from day-to-day life under the regime, we argue that exile fundamentally alters activists’ political opportunities and strategic behavior. We test the effect of exile on activists’ public discourse in the case of Venezuela, through an analysis of over 5 million tweets by 357 activists spanning seven years. Our results suggest that after going into exile activists increasingly emphasize foreign-led interventions to shape their home country politics, focus less on local grievances, and become more harshly critical of the regime. This is partly due to the changes in exiles’ networks: after leaving, activists increase their interactions with foreign actors and tweet more in English. This work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between exile—one of the most ubiquitous yet understudied forms of repression—and dissent in the digital age.

For Example: How to Use Examples in Political Science

“…The use of an example in presenting the prisoner's dilemma as mentioned earlier embodies the point at hand almost by definition. More empirically, Esberg andSiegel (2023, 1363) illustrate their claim that antiregime dissidents who go into exile become more likely to seek foreign intervention if this coincides with the interests of their host nation's governments with the examples of Iraqi (under Saddam Hussein) and Cuban exiles in the United States-which clearly do illustrate this point in understandable fashion. Mansbridge (2003, 523) introduces the example of Representative Barney Frank and the workings of his office to explain "surrogate representation" of categories of people beyond the representative's own constituency-in this case, "gay and lesbian citizens throughout the nation."…”

A Difficult Test for Hard Propaganda: Evidence from a Choice Experiment in Venezuela

“…Nevertheless, there was still widespread domestic and international opposition against the regime. NGOs counted around 7,000 protests in 2020, where citizens mostly demanded basic rights such as access to water, gasoline, and electricity, 4 and exiled opposition actors frequently called for political action against the Maduro government (Esberg & Siegel, 2022). To ensure informed consent, we briefed respondents that they were taking part in a scientific study on the political communication of the Maduro government.…”