When Censorship Works: Exploring the Effects of News Website Filtering in Egypt

In May 2017, the Egyptian authorities started a sudden and unprecedented online censorship campaign against news outlets. Since then, at least 108 news outlets encounter censorship in Egypt. In this paper, I investigate the development of Internet traffic on more than 200 news outlets from 2016 until 2020 to assess the consequences of online censorship in Egypt. Using generalized synthetic control models, I show that censorship can have devastating outcomes. Censored websites are much more likely to lose visitors in the short- and long-term–a result that, however, strongly depends on the type and audience of the censored newspaper. Moreover, I find evidence that websites are much more likely to dissolve after they got censored. Finally, this paper details only little evidence for increased interest in censorship practices or circumvention tools by users and news outlets themselves even when widespread censoring occurs. This study thus quantifies the consequences of draconian online censorship on the access to independent information and critical reporting in authoritarian regimes.