Digital authoritarianism with a global twist: Pakistan as virtual ‘1984’

An increasingly authoritarian state apparatus in Pakistan is pursuing a three-pronged strategy to impose a stifling digital censorship. Firstly, since 2016, stifling legislative measures have been introduced to control the social media platforms. In 2016, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) was introduced. In 2020, the Rules and Regulations for Social Media act was promulgated. In 2025, the PECA was amended to render it more venomous, oppressive and restrictive. Secondly, outright repressive methods, including torture, have been deployed to silence the online opposition. Dissenting voices, in particular journalists and bloggers critical of the military leadership, have been unlawfully arrested or harassed by the state security apparatuses. Thirdly, imported from China and Canada, firewalls playing the role of digital Big Brother, have been installed. With the help of these firewalls, the source of any online information can be immediately traced. The monitoring software has slowed down the Internet speed, causing a $300 million loss to an already collapsing economy. Given the praetorian nature of the Pakistani state whereby politics trumps economic interests, digital authoritarianism has turned Pakistan into a virtual dystopia. With Pakistan as a referral, this study aims at foregrounding two reticulated theses. Firstly, it argues that technologies, digital or otherwise, have a political economy. There is nothing inherently liberating in digitality as was uncritically claimed by the mainstream scholarship on information and communication technologies at the turn of the present century. Like all the preceding communication technologies, digitality also mirrors the balance of forces in a given society. Secondly, the suffix appended to ‘digital authoritarianism’ – or such alternatives as ‘networked authoritarianism’ or ‘digital repression’ – is a problematic notion on two counts. Firstly, authoritarianism, not unlike totalitarianism and populism, lacks conceptual precision despite its fashionability. Secondly, there is no universally applicable ‘digital authoritarianism’. On the contrary, there are multiple ‘digital authoritarianisms’. It is one thing to be under surveillance and harassed online. It is quite another level of repression when a Facebook post lands one in torture cells or extra-judicial murder.