Digital Authoritarianism Beyond Borders: Transnational Repression, Information Control, and Digital Self-Censorship in the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan Diasporas

This paper examines how digital technologies enable the extraterritorial projection of authoritarian power by governments in the Global South, focusing on Venezuela and Nicaragua. Building on recent scholarship on digital authoritarianism (Dragu & Lupu 2021; Schlumberger et al. 2024; Glasius 2023), the paper conceptualises these regimes as low-capacity but high-intentionality digital authoritarians, relying not on sophisticated infrastructures but on hybrid mechanisms of online surveillance, coercion-by-proxy, disinformation, censorship and restrictive cyber legislation. Empirically, the study draws on qualitative data from the RESONANT project, including interviews with Venezuelan and Nicaraguan diaspora members residing in Europe. The findings reveal systematic patterns of transnational digital repression: intimidation of relatives that induces political silence abroad; online harassment and public shaming of dissenters; and the extraterritorial application of cybercrime and foreign-agent laws. At the same time, widespread information blocking in the country of origin, such as Venezuela’s restriction of news websites, produces transnational informational asymmetries that distort diasporic political engagement. By analysing these practices as experienced and articulated by diaspora members themselves, the paper argues that digital self-censorship has become a central modality of authoritarian control beyond borders. This phenomenon illuminates how digital authoritarianism reshapes civic agency and democratic participation transnationally, and offers new empirical leverage to theorise the diffusion, instruments, and everyday effects of digital authoritarian practices in Latin America.