Digital Authoritarianism

During the last two decades, authoritarianism has gone virtual. Not only people living under authoritarian rule but also those living in democracies are faced with new challenges and urgencies in light of the emerging phenomenon of digital authoritarianism. Authoritarian regimes have started to draw on a plethora of digital tools and sophisticated computational strategies to manipulate opinions and manufacture consent among the population of their countries and beyond. Examples include repressive cyber legislations, widespread censorship, intrusive methods of online surveillance, and industrialized forms of digital disinformation such as troll factories and aggressive cyber troops. However, while several new studies look into single tools of digital authoritarianism, there is a lack of comparative research which investigates the varieties of digital authoritarian strategies (Keremoğlu & Weidmann, 2020). Hence, we know little about how the different practices of digital authoritarianism complement each other, how they are combined with offline authoritarian practices and what purposes they are intended to serve. In addition, we know little about the effects and scope of such digital power.