The Effects of Social Media on Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Scholars and journalists have intensely debated the degree to which social media affect authoritarian regimes. This paper makes several contributions to this dialogue. This work examines the current intersection between digital communication and political power, arguing that it is best understood as a multifaceted exchange forming complex dynamics at the domestic level and fostering contrasting processes at the international level. It then examines selected cases of authoritarian regimes to analyze these dynamics, including Russia, China, Iran, and Tunisia, observing a diversity of approaches and effects shaped by a complex set of technological, political, and societal factors. The study discusses literature on social media and contentious politics as well as literature on the new information environment in authoritarian states, with a focus on works that shed light on the reasons behind state policies toward social media. Relevant scholarship on social media in selected countries is also discussed (Hussain, 2011).Of all the intricate policy issues posed by the global spread of the Internet, questions of political repression may be the messiest. Internet freedom is an axiom among western democracies, which pushes back against censorship and surveillance. It is also seen as an instrument of economic liberalization and political reform in the Global South. After WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring, the question of the Internet’s power to facilitate political change came to dominate policy debates about the pernicious effects of the Internet. But for a growing number of states, the wonder of the Internet is its potential for more finely concentrated repression. In the wake of industrialized web-based housed attacks such as Estonia in 2007 and the targeting of Jihadist recruitment forums by American and British intelligence services activities, national security social workers began working together to develop creative means to counter the use of the Internet for unrest. Four more years passed and Assad was gone and ISIS was everywhere and this concept, “the regular orphans of the Syrian civil war,” was manically gifting.

Keywords

 social media, authoritarian regimes, political power, censorship, repression, digital communication, international dynamics, contentious politics.