Communication, coordination, and surveillance in the shadow of repression

Abstract

Communication technology helps protesters organize, but also allows the government to monitor and repress their actions. We study this trade-off in a model where protesters want to show up at the same time and place, but also want to avoid government forces. If leaders of a movement can send messages observed only by other protesters, they can successfully coordinate on a variety of sites and force the government to spread resources thin, helping the success of the movement. If the government always observes the messages too, protesters can do no better than always going to a “focal site” knowing that the government will send all resources there as well, and thus experience higher levels of repression for the sake of coordinating tactics. Intermediate cases where messages are partially observed generate dynamics where new technologies and media that are relatively known to other protesters and not the government are used until the government can reliably infiltrate them and the protesters move on to a new medium. When some protesters are more informed than others, the model can explain protest tactics observed in recent prominent cases like having smaller “parallel” protests at the same time but different location of the main gathering.