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Abstract
Governments' efforts to become more competent with digital technologies result in the rise of repressive strategies that are used to undermine, complicate, or even prevent citizens’ online political engagement. Although scholars have examined an array of these strategies in terms of motivations, means, and outcomes, the tension between citizens’ desire to engage in online political expression and the use of government repression is understudied in regard to authoritarian contexts. In this dissertation, I offer a social-psychological approach to analyzing the experience of individuals facing repression by focusing on their judgment and decision-making processes about their engagement in low-cost but high risk online political behaviors.
Drawing on social norms and risk judgment and decision-making frameworks, I propose a theoretical model to address citizens’ experiences with networked authoritarianism in the context of online political expression. Online surveys conducted in two networked authoritarian contexts provide empirical evidence to test the proposed theoretical model in two separate studies. The first study examines the role of affective and cognitive components of risk perceptions in citizens’ engagement in online political expression. The second study focuses on the impact of regime’s repressive injunctive norm vis-à-vis social network’s pro-expressive descriptive norm on citizens’ intention to engage in online political expression.
My findings suggest that how individuals feel about online political expression influences individuals' decision to engage in it more so than how much risk they think there is. Moreover, while salience of regime's repressive injunctive norm impacts both affective and cognitive risk components pertaining to online expression, it indirectly influences intention to express political opinions online via citizens' feelings about the behavior. The findings also reveal the conditional impact of regime opposition and involvement with the content of expressive behaviors on these relationships. Overall, by bringing the focus back to individuals, this project offers a more nuanced understanding of how online political expression contributes to endeavors to deal with repression at the citizen level.
