Is Remote Sensing a Better Measure of Internet Censorship than Expert Analysis? Analyzing Tradeoffs for International Donors and Advocacy Organizations

Donor organizations and multilaterals require ways to measure progress towards the goals of creating an open internet, and condition assistance on recipient governments maintaining access to information online. Because the internet increasingly becomes a leading tool for exchanging information, authoritarian governments around the world often seek methods to restrict citizens’ access. Two of the most common methods for restricting the internet are shutting down internet access entirely and filtering specific content. We condusct a systemic literature review of articles on the measurment of internet censorship and find that little work has been done comparing the tradeoffs of using different methods to measure censorship on a global scale. We compare the tradeoffs for donor organizations that want to incentivize and measure good internet governance between measuring these phenomena using expert analysis (as measured by Freedom House and V-Dem) and remote measurement with manual oversight (as measured by Access Now and the OpenNet Initiative (ONI)). We find that remote measurement with manual oversight is less likely to include false positives, and therefore may be more preferable for donor organizations that value verifiaility. We also find that expert analysis is less likely to include false negatives, particularly for very repressive regimes in the Middle East and Central Asia and therefore these data may be preferable for advocacy organizations that want to ensure very repressive regimes are not able to avoid accountability, or organizaitons working primarily in these areas.