Repression, Education, and Politically Motivated Cyberattacks

What factors drive politically motivated cyberattacks? Our research focuses on one particular kind of cyberattack: politically motivated, distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). We argue that denial-of-service attacks are a particular form of a larger category of political contention that is more similar to nonviolent than violent activism. We offer a country-level explanation that helps establish why some nation-states are more likely to suffer such attacks while most others are not. When we control for wealth and Internet penetration, the strongest factor explaining why a country is more likely to suffer DDoS attacks is the dangerous combination of repression and a highly educated population. The results have important implications both for the scholarly study of this form of contention, as well as for policymakers grappling with this new form of activism.