Internet Shutdowns In India Only Fuel The Fires Of Violence

The social media shutdown that followed the recent terror attacks in Sri Lanka was no isolated incident. On a global level, more than 40 countries have executed more than 400 blackouts of social media or Internet access since the Arab Spring. India accounts for an overwhelming majority of this tally. Nearly half of the estimated 306 shutdowns executed in India over the last seven years occurred in 2018, amid the surge of lynchings attributed to the circulation of violent content on WhatsApp.

Shutdowns have caused billions of dollars in economic damage and deeply impacted lives and livelihoods across India. But rarely do we hear a fundamental question: do shutdowns achieve their intended goals? State governments in India routinely frame deliberate blackouts as either a public safety response to agitations or a preventive measure to restrain disinformation on social media and communication apps. Not a single time have they provided more than anecdotal evidence that a blackout successfully prevented the escalation of protest or curbed the spread of false information with the potential to stoke violence. The effectiveness of shutdowns in protecting public safety tends to be perceived as an indisputable truth, both in India and abroad.

Dissecting a blackout

Research suggests that this ‘indisputable truth’ is false. A recent study by one of the authors of this article examined thousands of peaceful demonstrations and violent riots that were reported across India in 2016, exploring how they evolved in the midst of a blackout. Violent protest generally increased on each consecutive day of disconnection relative to the typical dynamics of agitations that do not feature communication blackouts. This escalation only dissipated on the fifth consecutive day, eclipsing sheer numbers the riots that occur when communication remains available.

This finding alone brings into question the logic and ultimate purpose of shutdowns into question. But do blackouts disrupt the coordination of non-violent protests, leaving security forces to counter the chaos that unfolds? That does not seem to be the case either. Although peaceful demonstrations during blackouts do not seem to expand with every passing day as they usually would, they also do not show a steady decrease in numbers. The government’s odds of extinguishing peaceful collective action in the streets during a blackout are no better than random chance.

The trajectory of the Burhan Wani protests in Kashmir is a case in point. Decades of armed separatist insurgency in Kashmir led to the granting of special powers to the army and disproportionately high rates of unrest. Since 2012, the state’s executive powers have increasingly relied on Internet shutdowns to try to contain street protest. In the ‘Burhan aftermath,’ connectivity was disrupted for an unprecedented six months, turning the shutdown into what can be called a digital siege.―Hindustan Times