Strategic Analysis of Dissent and Self-Censorship

Dissent against authority is ubiquitous throughout human history and culture, as are authorities' efforts to maintain power, stability, and social order. But modern Internet infrastructure, encrypted communication protocols, social media, and automated surveillance technologies pose new opportunities and threats for potential dissidents. Especially in authoritarian settings, individuals must assess the risk of voicing their true opinions or self-censoring, voluntarily moderating their behavior to comply with authority.

In this talk, I present a model in which individuals strategically manage the tradeoff between expressing dissent and avoiding punishment through self-censorship while an authority adapts its policies to minimize both total expressed dissent and punishment costs. I present analytical and simulation results deriving conditions separating *defiant individuals* who express their desired dissent in spite of punishment from *self-censoring individuals* who fully or partially limit their expression. There always exists a Nash equilibrium at which the authority can achieve total self-censorship, but the probability and time for an initially moderate, locally-adaptive authority to suppress dissent depend critically on the population's willingness to withstand punishment early on, which can deter the authority from adopting more extreme policies. This is joint work with Robert Axelrod (UMich) and Stephanie Forrest (ASU).

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https://jdaymude.github.io/