Findings

After comparing the volume of government-relevant and political posts on Jamii Forums during different time periods, we found that the average number of daily posts considerably increased during the 2015 election period and the passage of the Cybercrimes Act, suggesting that the law did not restrict citizens’ online behaviors. However, thousands of users had suspended posting on political threads just before the law took effect. The increased volume in daily posts consisted of additional entries by the same users and an influx of new accounts.

Thus, we used our data to compare the sentiments of posts by inactive and new accounts. Figure 1 depicts the prevalence of posts demonstrating negative sentiments towards government actors by inactive and active users. We found that new users and lapsed users shared the same critical sentiments towards the government, suggesting that the repressive law had likely motivated citizens to strategically open new accounts to avoid censorship.

Policy Implications 

The data on Jamii Forums has provided valuable insights to improve our understanding of the influence of government repression on citizens’ online behavior. Once the Cybercrimes Law went into effect, the government began using it to prosecute various Jamii Forums users, including founder Maxence Melo. The decline in thousands of accounts depicts the Tanzanian government’s aggression and success in dissuading citizens from online discussion and further whistle-blowing. In the future, we hope these results will help decision makers better understand the ways in which legal restrictions can demobilize citizens. We will also examine a more nuanced picture in future works.

See Policy Brief and publications below for more detailed information