TY - JOUR

T1 - Fighting Propaganda with Censorship

T2 - A Study of the Ukrainian Ban on Russian Social Media

AU - Golovchenko, Yevgeniy

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Many states have become concerned with Russian cyberattacks and online propaganda. The Ukrainian government responded to the information threat in 2017 by blocking access to several Russian websites, including VKontakte, one of the most popular social media websites in Ukraine. By exploiting a natural experiment in Ukraine, I find that the sudden censorship policy reduced activity on VKontakte, despite the fact that a vast majority of the users were legally and technically able to bypass the ban. Users with strong political and social affiliations to Russia were at least as likely to be affected by the ban as those with weak affiliations. I argue that the ease of access to online media—not political attitudes toward the state—was the main mechanism behind the users’ response to the ban. These findings suggest that this pragmatic view on the effects of censorship holds, even in the highly politicized military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which later evolved into a full-scale Russian invasion.

AB - Many states have become concerned with Russian cyberattacks and online propaganda. The Ukrainian government responded to the information threat in 2017 by blocking access to several Russian websites, including VKontakte, one of the most popular social media websites in Ukraine. By exploiting a natural experiment in Ukraine, I find that the sudden censorship policy reduced activity on VKontakte, despite the fact that a vast majority of the users were legally and technically able to bypass the ban. Users with strong political and social affiliations to Russia were at least as likely to be affected by the ban as those with weak affiliations. I argue that the ease of access to online media—not political attitudes toward the state—was the main mechanism behind the users’ response to the ban. These findings suggest that this pragmatic view on the effects of censorship holds, even in the highly politicized military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which later evolved into a full-scale Russian invasion.

U2 - 10.1086/716949

DO - 10.1086/716949

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85126441248

VL - 84

SP - 639

EP - 654

JO - Journal of Politics

JF - Journal of Politics

SN - 0022-3816

IS - 2

ER -