Rethinking Repression under Authoritarian Rule: Digital and Transnational Dynamics of Coercion in the Middle East

Abstract

Repression is a key pillar of autocracies in their attempts to control the population in general, and to preclude challenges arising from protest movements and dissidents more specifically. Ever since the Arab uprisings of 2011, the Middle East and North Africa has witnessed a heightened degree of repression. This panel investigates repressive strategies in current autocracies of the Middle East and North Africa. While earlier studies of repression often focus on easily quantifiable measures such as its scope and severity, this panel acknowledges the complex nature of repression. It sheds light on recent conceptual approaches to studying repression in autocracies and proposes a disaggregated understanding of repression. Empirically, it analyses how digital repression of citizens in today’s Egypt, Iran, Syria and the respective diaspora communities unfolds, shaping the opportunities for contention. The panel brings together scholars working on transnational and digitally enabled methods of repression which Middle Eastern autocrats rely on to exert coercive power and extend it beyond their borders into diaspora populations. Across the MENA region and beyond, a striking innovation in repressive techniques pertains to the use of digital tools by incumbent autocrats. As activists in countries such as Egypt and Syria face harsh physical repression, many dissidents have gone into exile and turned to online mobilization from abroad. The online sphere plays a dual role as the space activists use for mobilizing resistance, while at the same time giving governments new possibilities to surveil the population and forestall activism by harassing dissidents, imposing censorship, and circulating fake news. Consequently, two closely related aspects stand out in current innovative research on repression: the transnational dimensions of repression and the use of digital tools for controlling populations, both at home and abroad. Doing research in and on repressive contexts is notoriously difficult. Analysing the online sphere provides a way to mitigate this problem by recurring to openly available sources. Digital technologies also offer innovative methods for tracing recent developments and investigating new sites of contestation between autocrats and the resistance, including the interplay between domestic and transnational activism.

Title	Details
The Arab Uprisings and the Return of Repression	View Paper Details
When Censorship Works: Exploring the Effects of News Website Filtering in Egypt	View Paper Details
Activism from Exile: Online Mobilization and Repression in Egypt	View Paper Details
Resisting Transnational Repression: The Digital Security Practices of Exiled Activists from Authoritarian Contexts	View Paper Details