Business

Computer network

Demographic economics

Censorship

Politics

The Internet

Advertising

World Wide Web

Political science

China

Economics

Information Dissemination

Computer science

Social media

Democracy

Information transmission

Authoritarianism

Freedom of the press

American Economic Review

Media censorship is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. We conduct a field experiment in China to measure the effects of providing citizens with access to an uncensored internet. We track subjects’ media consumption, beliefs regarding the media, economic beliefs, political attitudes, and behaviors over 18 months. We find four main results: (i) free access alone does not induce subjects to acquire politically sensitive information; (ii) temporary encouragement leads to a persistent increase in acquisition, indicating that demand is not permanently low; (iii) acquisition brings broad, substantial, and persistent changes to knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and intended behaviors; and (iv) social transmission of information is statistically significant but small in magnitude. We calibrate a simple model to show that the combination of low demand for uncensored information and the moderate social transmission means China’s censorship apparatus may remain robust to a large number of citizens receiving access to an uncensored internet. (JEL C93, D72, D83, L82, L86, L88, P36)

The Impact of Media Censorship: 1984 or Brave New World?