Information Suppression Across Autocracies: Comparative Approaches to Digital Control

Digital authoritarianism has emerged as a cornerstone of contemporary governance strategies in authoritarian countries that can also surpass their physical territorial limits. This paper examines the mechanisms of digital suppression —a subset of information control tactics— across authoritarian regimes, focusing on their deployment in the context of information suppression (IS). Building on recent conceptualisations of IS as an intentional strategy to control or eliminate access to critical information, developed as a result of the work conducted in RESONANT1 project, we explore how actors manipulate digital spaces to achieve strategic objectives in the online realm. Therefore, this paper contributes to the broader understanding of digital authoritarianism by offering a comparative framework for analysing digital IS tactics, particularly their role in limiting democratic resilience and political participation through digital spaces. Although IS techniques have been categorised by their leading to censorship or self-censorship, they can also be studied regarding the environment in which they take place, finding algorithmic downranking, content takedowns, and digital transnational repression (DTR) tactics among the most used in the online sphere. This research draws upon case studies from authoritarian contexts as China and Russia, while adding other countries’ strategies into it, such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran and Turkey. It demonstrates that information suppression is employed differently but with converging goals across these regimes, exploring the common tactics used by them, while also adding onto the research on authoritarian collaboration and serving as tactics for foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). Methodologically, this research adopts a mixed-methods approach. First, it utilizes a thematic analysis of digital IS tactics documented in global watchdog reports, academic sources and policy databases. Second, it incorporates QCA to identify patterns in state behaviour across regimes for each type of incident. Finally, discourse analysis from interviews with journalists, academics, and key stakeholders affected by digital suppression validate findings and capture the human dimension of these practices. Findings reveal that while some authoritarian regimes favour overt and legalistic measures, such as censorship laws and direct infrastructure control, others increasingly rely on covert strategies, including platform manipulation and algorithmic suppression, often justified under the guise of combating disinformation. This convergence of tactics highlights the fluidity of digital authoritarianism and the erosion of territorial limits in warfare in the digital era.