Communications shutdowns backfire in dense cities where informal street networks replace telecom

Evidence

The government had shut down telecommunications that day in the hopes of cutting the legs out from under the marchers. This was a mistake. Cairo is a dense, tightly knit city. For millions of people, Tahrir Square is basically just down the road. If you want to know what is going on with that protest, or your son or daughter, you can just walk over. Lots of people did exactly this. After decades of dictatorship, there were very few formal structures in civil society. But there were surely informal structures. The people, or “the street,” kept everyone abreast of what was going on. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 226

Categorization

• QUESTION: Generalizable claim: does the density argument explain why shutdown tactics fail in some regimes but succeed in others?
• XREF: connects to: Ad hoc neighbor networks after disaster outperform institutional aid. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 459; Mass communication systems and the automobile reduced the necessity of urban walking — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 395; Collective emergencies suspend urban anonymity and legitimize open stranger contact (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Ad hoc neighbor networks after disaster outperform institutional aid. #corroborates (0.88) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 459
• Mass communication systems and the automobile reduced the necessity of urban walking #expands (0.80) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 395
• Collective emergencies suspend urban anonymity and legitimize open stranger contact #qualifies (0.75)
• Pandemic-era hyper-connectivity coincided with heightened social isolation #qualifies (0.73) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 644