Liberation Technology: Mobile Phones and Political Mobilization in Africa

Abstract

Can digital information and communication technology foster mass political mobilization? We use a novel georeferenced data set for the entire African continent between 1998 and 2012 on the coverage of mobile phone signal together with georeferenced data from multiple sources on the occurrence of protests and on individual participation in protests to bring this argument to empirical scrutiny. We find that while mobile phones are instrumental to mass mobilization, this only happens during economic downturns, when reasons for grievance emerge and the cost of participation falls. The results are in line with insights from a network model with imperfect information and strategic complementarities in protest occurrence. Mobile phones make individuals more responsive to both changes in economic conditions—a mechanism that we ascribe to enhanced information—and to their neighbors' participation—a mechanism that we ascribe to enhanced coordination.

Mobile phones, digital inequality, and fertility: Longitudinal evidence from Malawi

“…A growing body of empirical literature from low-income settings shows that mobile phone ownership positively affects market performance (Jensen 2007;Aker 2010;Aker and Fafchamps 2014), household income (Blauw and Franses 2016;Hübler and Hartje 2016), education (Aker, Ksoll, and Lybbert 2012), and under certain circumstances political participation (Manacorda and Tesei 2020). Health-care interventions based on mobile phones can improve the delivery of health services, including access to antiretroviral (Lester et al 2010) and malaria therapies (Zurovac et al 2011).…”

Do pandemics lead to rebellion? Policy responses to COVID-19, inequality, and protests in the USA

“…Recent evidence also shows that participation in the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021 was connected to political preferences in previous elections (van Dijcke and Wright 2021). In addition, factors such as social and political trust and levels of civic engagement and social cooperation may play key roles in mobilizing individuals to protest, including during COVID-19 (Tarrow 1998;Justino 2015;Sangnier and Zylberberg 2017;Acemoglu et al 2018;Justino andMartorano 2018, 2019;Larson et al 2019;Aghajanian et al 2020;Manacorda and Tesei 2020;Levi and Stoker 2000). 8 The mechanism analysis we conduct in the paper lends stronger support to the economic downturn hypothesis.…”

“…Finally, social factors may also matter in explaining protests since the ability to draw on networks and organizations may facilitate social coordination and help social movements overcome asymmetric information challenges (Tarrow 1998, Acemoglu et al 2018Larson et al 2019;Aghajanian et al 2020;Manacorda and Tesei 2020). To capture these social characteristics at the start of the pandemic, we have split the sample across values above or below the average for two types of variables (Table 8).…”

“…Understanding the causes and consequences of protests and organized collective dissent has been a longstanding question in political economy. This literature has identified several determinants of protests, ranging from economic and social exclusion to political ideology, push back against repression, and the expansion of social media (Tarrow 1998;Chenoweth and Stephan 2008;Sangnier and Zylberberg 2017;Steinert-Threlkeld 2017;Larson et al 2019;Rozenas and Zhukov 2019;Enikolopov et al 2020;Fergusson and Molina 2020;Manacorda and Tesei 2020;Wasow 2020).…”

Profiling Insurrection: Characterizing Collective Action Using Mobile Device Data

“…Prior work has demonstrated the role of economic conditions, political repression, exclusion of racial, ethnic, or economic minorities, use of force, (mis)information campaigns and social media in explaining when and where protests (Steinert-Threlkeld, 2017;Chyzh and Labzina, 2018;Justino and Martorano, 2019;Fergusson and Molina, 2020;Martinez, Jessen and Xu, 2020;Manacorda and Tesei, 2020), riots (Sullivan, 2019;Hsiao and Radnitz, 2020), violence (Müller and Schwarz, 2020), and armed opposition movements emerge (Oppenheim et al, 2015;Dippel and Heblich, 2021). A significant body of research has also provided evidence that these instances of collective action have affected political reforms (Tarrow, 1994;Rasler, 1996;Kurzman, 1996;Chenoweth and Stephan, 2008;Gillion, 2013;Andrews and Gaby, 2015;Klein and Regan, 2018;De Vogel, 2020), voting patterns (Wasow, 2020;Enos, Kaufman and Sands, 2019;Larreboure and González, 2019), social attitudes and cohesion (Branton et al, 2015;Muñoz and Anduiza, 2019;Mazumder, 2019), and economic activity.…”