The Many Faces of Digital Authoritarianism

Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of two global “mega” trends: the world is becoming more digitized and more authoritarian. Many democracies worldwide are experiencing a gradual but substantial deterioration, while several non-democratic regimes are manifesting harsher forms of authoritarianism. Against this backdrop, the initial optimism regarding digitization’s impact on political processes gave way to widespread concerns about authoritarian uses of digital technologies (digital authoritarianism) both in democracies and non-democracies. Digital authoritarianism encompasses a range of digitally assisted practices and the underlying infrastructures that enable these practices. The increasing reliance on digital technologies facilitates this worrying trend, the consequent generation of unprecedented amounts of data, and the unparalleled capacity to exploit this data for authoritarian purposes. The field of digital authoritarianism encompasses a multitude of interdisciplinary approaches and a wide range of inquiries and methodologies. Research has for instance focused on authoritarian practices of covert surveillance methods, widespread censorship, online and digitally-assisted offline repression, disinformation campaigns, and the manipulation of voting behavior both in democracies and dictatorships (Feldstein 2021; Freedom House 2018a, 2018b; Maerz 2025)., and how authoritarianism is transforming as a consequent of these technologically – enabled practices (Diamond 2019; Schlumberger et al. 2024). Other inquiries examine how digital technologies and AI influence politics in both democratic and authoritarian regimes, and how they can foster anti-democratic and authoritarian practices. These works focus on a range of topics, including the interaction between digital technologies and AI in contentious politics (Earl, Maher, and Pan, 2022), the dynamics of accountability (Larreguy and Raffler, 2025), and “uncivil” political communication (Theocharis and Jungherr 2021). Other works shed light on patterns of authoritarian control over the internet’s infrastructure and digital technology (Keremoğlu and Weidmann 2020). In addition to this regime-focused line of inquiry, diverse and equally important scholarly works examine how digital technologies catalyze socio-political and economic transformations conducive to authoritarianism, as well as how sociopolitical and economic structures produce authoritarian–prone technologies. Some works, thus, examine how digitization fosters polarization, negatively influences citizens’ informational environment (Maati et al. 2023), and distorts political communication in both democratic and authoritarian regimes. Other research highlights not only how sociopolitical, economic, and regulatory structures produce technology susceptible to authoritarian uses (Conduit 2025; Zuboff et al. 2019), but also how the technical characteristics of digital technologies underpin the authoritarian uses of technology (Deibert 2019). The eclecticism of this emerging field of study evoke fundamental questions as to the methodological toolkit required to meaningfully and holistically understand the complex intertwinement of technology, authoritarianism, and democratic backsliding. It also triggers interest in studying global patterns of technological innovation as well as the dynamics of technological and policy diffusion that underscore the authoritarian uses of technology. This section encompasses the richness of this interdisciplinary and still emerging field of digital authoritarianism; it also welcomes critical reflection on the limitations of its eclecticism. It invites panels and papers that contribute to any of the thematic areas in the field of digital authoritarianism and particularly welcomes comparative and interdisciplinary approaches that widen the field’s frontiers. We welcome papers and panels that include, but are not limited to, works that examine: - Digitally-enabled authoritarian practices, particularly how these practices affect particular groups in society. - How digitization and technological advancements alter authoritarian regimes. - The role of technology in democratic backsliding. - Which modes of innovation and tech development foster authoritarianism, and which are conducive to democracy. - Democratizing technology/ algorithms. - Which regulatory frameworks promote transparency; which foster secrecy and manipulation. - The political economy of digital authoritarianism. - Methodological toolkits and theoretical frameworks to structure the field. Preliminary Panels: Political influencers in the age of fascization and polarization Chair: Ülker Sozen This panel - examine how politics intersect with the content creator economy in contemporary digital media environments marked by intensifying polarization, authoritarian practices, and ongoing debates around fascization. We invite papers that address the following themes: the authority, authenticity, and community-building strategies of political influencers; the negotiation between political messaging and monetization; the role of platform governance, algorithms, and AI in shaping political influencer ecosystems; the tensions between ego-driven influencer culture and collective political ideals; the production, circulation, and contestation of anti-genderism by political influencers; and the offline political ramifications of online influence. We particularly encourage contributions focusing on Global South contexts and exploring vernacularized forms of political influencer culture. Advancing Methodologies in Studying Digital Authoritarianism Chair: Hossein Kermani This panel showcases and debates recent methodological advances. The rapid expansion of big data, the maturation of computational social science, and the rise of generative AI now enable unprecedented analyses of repression, manipulation, and control across digital and physical spaces. Our aim is to move beyond normative critiques by demonstrating how state-of-the-art techniques—network analysis, NLP, computer vision, and agent-based simulation—can be used alone or in tandem with established approaches such as qualitative interpretation, digital ethnography, and critical discourse analysis. This panel prioritizes methodological contributions: works that proposes new measurement or identification tools; designs for inference under censorship and manipulation; data collection/annotation protocols for sensitive, low-resource, or high-risk contexts; validity, bias, and error audits (including for LLM-based pipelines); and reproducible workflows that integrate qualitative interpretation with computational methods. Authoritarian Innovation and Diffusion in the Digital Era Chair: Gregory Asmolov Kneuer and Demmelhuber (2016) argue that authoritarian gravity centres drive the active promotion of autocracy and related diffusion effects, largely within regional contexts. In a digitally interconnected world, however, diffusion is not constrained by geography. This panel explores how digital technologies and governance models enable new forms of authoritarian innovation and transnational diffusion. It identifies and compares centres of authoritarian innovation, map their regional clusters, and examine their global impact. The panel also investigates how infrastructure ownership in domains like telecommunications, cloud computing, AI hardware, and digital payments transforms certain states or corporations into hubs of authoritarian influence. Key guiding questions include: Are authoritarian gravity centers hierarchical or polycentric? How crises accelerate authoritarian innovation and diffusion? What are the limits of diffusion, and how local political cultures, economic dependencies, and public resistances create friction?