commbox Authoritarian Regimes

Censorship, the Media, and the Market in China

Jonathan Hassid

Journal of Chinese Political Science, volume 25 (2020), pp. 285–309

"Pervasive media censorship in China is often seen as a strictly political issue. Although in past years reporters have had leeway to report on economic issues, the Chinese Party/state has moved to tamp down economic journalism, even arresting those who report on bad economic news. This shift brings ... more

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I Know What You Mean: Information Compensation in an Authoritarian Country

Jiangnan Zhu, Chengli Wang

International Journal of Press/Politics, volume 26, issue 3 (2020), pp. 587-608

"How do people address information deficiency caused by rigid control of information in authoritarian regimes? We argue that there exists an internally oriented information compensation approach through which people can glean extra information from official messages domestically. This approach does ... more

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Media Convergence and the Development Strategies of Radio and Television in China

Peng Duan

Singapore: Springer (2020), viii, 166 pp.

"This book discusses the development strategies of Chinese media convergence in the current, fast-changing communication environment. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical data and based on the author's observations, focus groups, and in-depth analyses of selected Chinese radio and TV networks, ... more

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Retweeting Through the Great Firewall: A Persistent and Undeterred Threat Actor

Jacob Wallis, Tom Uren, Elise Thomas, Albert Zhang, Samantha Hoffman, Lin Li, Alex Pascoe, Danielle Cave

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), International Cyber Policy Centre (2020), 56 pp.

"This report analyses a persistent, large-scale influence campaign linked to Chinese state actors on Twitter and Facebook. This activity largely targeted Chinese-speaking audiences outside of the Chinese mainland (where Twitter is blocked) with the intention of influencing perceptions on key issues, ... more

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Decentralization of Political Design in China

Jonathan Benney

Pacific Affairs: an International Review of Asia and the Pacific, volume 93, issue 4 (2020), pp. 709-734

"Political posters, banners, and similar objects are extremely common in China. This article uses political design from contemporary China, particularly emphasising the government’s Chinese Dream campaign, to analyze what at first appears to be a paradox. The subjects of the campaigns and the lang ... more

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Chinese Independent Animation: Renegotiating Identity in Modern China

Wenhai Zhou

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2020), xii, 222 pp.

"This study of 'independent' animation opens up a quietly subversive and vibrant dimension of contemporary Chinese culture which, hitherto, has not received as much attention as dissident art or political activism. Scholarly interest in Chinese animation has increased over the last decade, with atte ... more

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The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies
Top Insights

Nils B. Weidmann, Espen Geelmuyden Rød

New York: Oxford University Press (2019), x, 205 pp.

"Eight years after the Arab Spring there is still much debate over the link between Internet technology and protest against authoritarian regimes. While the debate has advanced beyond the simple question of whether the Internet is a tool of liberation or one of surveillance and propaganda, theory an ... more

China’s New Media Dilemma: The Profit in Online Dissent

Louisa Chiang

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2019), 24 pp.

"Drawing from often overlooked sources of evidence, this report shows that China’s homegrown social media platforms have responded to market incentives by subtly shielding users from certain forms of online censorship and repression. Meanwhile, the party confronts rising costs—both economicall ... more

Citizens and Condemnation: Strategic Uses of International Human Rights Pressure in Authoritarian States

Jamie J. Gruffydd-Jones

Comparative Political Studies, volume 52, issue 4 (2019), pp. 579-612

"Governments with strict control over the information that their citizens hear from foreign sources are regular targets of human rights pressure, but we know little about how this information matters in the domestic realm. I argue that authoritarian regimes strategically pass on certain types of ext ... more

Berichterstattung über öffentliche Proteste in Kasachstan: Medienkontrolle als Quelle politischer Macht

Heiko Pleines

Zentralasien-Analysen, issue 138 (2019), pp. 2-5

"Die Berichterstattung der kasachstanischen Massenmedien über Proteste im Lande folgt einer klaren Linie. Kleinere Proteste werden ignoriert. Wenn über größere Demonstrationen berichtet wird, kommen ihre Vertreter nicht zu Wort und ihre Forderungen werden nicht erwähnt. Stattdessen werden der i ... more

The Use of Twitter Bots in Russian Political Communication

Denis Stukal, Sergey Sanovich, Richard A. Bonneau, Joshua A. Tucker

Washington, DC: PONARS Eurasia (2019), 10 pp.

"Our analysis of millions of Russian tweets over 2014-2018 reveals that bots make up a large proportion of the Russian political Twittersphere. However, an important lesson from our region is that one cannot assume that simply because there are bots present in the Russian political Twittersphere tha ... more

Dialogue Between Absentees? Liberation Radio Engages its Audiences, Namibia, 1978-1989

Robert Heinze

Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, volume 16, issue 2 (2019), pp. 489-510

"Liberation radios, the propaganda stations operated by the anti-Apartheid and anticolonial movements Southern Africa, provide us with a unique lens on the relationship between broadcasters and their audiences. Most importantly, they conceptualized audiences in a specific, two-pronged way to mobiliz ... more

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Social Media in Africa: An Emerging Force for Autocrats and Activists

Geoffrey York

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 415-430

"The most extreme damage inflicted by social media can be seen in South Sudan. As documented in the chapter by Theo Dolan, social media in South Sudan has contributed to hatred and conflict among ethnic groups. Many investigators, including UN investigators, have warned that South Sudan's social med ... ia are triggering violence against ethnic groups. Since the beginning of the civil war in late 2013, social media has fuelled waves of hate speech that have provoked deadly violence and ethnic conflict in South Sudan, including massacres and other atrocities. In that sense, social media has become a new variation of the "hate radio" phenomenon that flourished in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide … Social media is also emerging as a powerful way to harass and intimidate the opponents of a regime or a political party. In this sense, it adds another weapon to the arsenal of a powerful regime that already has multiple weapons at its disposal. A regime can mobilize its supporters to use social media in a targeted way against its foes, or it can use its financial resources to create a fake army of fictional users on social media. In either case, it is tilting the playing field against its enemies. A targeted attack through social media can be more effective than the telephone threats or messages often deployed in the past. The use of social media can be more intimidating because it belittles the targeted person in front of a much bigger audience. The presence of this audience means that the attack is more damaging, more difficult to ignore and has the potential to mobilize large numbers of people against the victim … While social media is often used for anti-democratic purposes in Africa's authoritarian states, it has also been used as a force for reform, accountability and justice. It has helped to safeguard the fairness of elections. It has allowed greater scrutiny of potential threats, such as vote-rigging or violence, allowing citizens to be alerted when there is still a chance to prevent the worst abuses. It has put a spotlight on corruption and political wrongdoing, allowing activists to mobilize pressure on governments to resolve these long-neglected problems. In some cases, as it did in the Arab Spring, social media has played a role in toppling an authoritarian state. When an election was called in the small West African state of Gambia, where the dictator Yahya Jammeh had ruled for 22 years, opposition candidates had little access to state-controlled media. So the main opposition party created more than a dozen WhatsApp groups, allowing it to communicate with voters. Other forms of social media also proliferated. A leading independent group, the Gambia Youth and Women's Forum, discussed election issues on a public Facebook group with 55,000 members. The government blocked access to WhatsApp and eventually extended the shutdown to the entire internet, but Gambians used virtual private network (VPN) technology to bypass the shutdown. The opposition won the election and Jammeh was forced to flee the country." (Pages 419-423) more

Social Media in Egypt: Impacts on Civil Society, Violent Extremism & Government Control

Sabine Shyre

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 7 pp.

"Throughout this policy brief, we vet the use of social media in a major Middle Eastern country - Egypt - where the youth took to the streets to express frustrations that lasted almost a lifetime. While social media helped topple autocratic dictator, Hosni Mubarak, it played the role of Pandora’s ... more

Venezuela’s 21st Century Authoritarianism in the Digital Sphere

Iria Puyosa

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 14 pp.

"This policy brief summarises extensive information on digital rights violations and politically motivated information disorders affecting Venezuelans, principally social media users. The brief focuses on the conflict dynamic between an authoritarian government and those fighting for re-democratisat ... more

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A Clash of Cultures: Pirate Radio Convergence and Reception in Africa

Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara

In: The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media

Chris Atton (ed.)

London; New York: Routledge, paperback ed. (2019), pp. 494-504

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Cultural Dissent in Soviet Belarus (1968-1988): Intelligentsia, Samizdat and Nonconformist Discourses

Tatsiana Astrouskaya

Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag (2019), xv, 232 pp.

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Documenting Syria: Film-Making, Video Activism and Revolution

Josepha Ivanka Wessels

London et al.: Tauris (2019), xiv, 321 pp.

"Since the 1970s, Syrian cinema masters played a defining role in avant-garde filmmaking and political dissent against authoritarianism. After the outbreak of violence in 2011, an estimated 500,000 video clips were uploaded making it one of the first YouTubed revolutions in history. This book is the ... more

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A History of Journalism and Communication in China

Yunze Zhao, Ping Sun

London; New York: Routledge (2018), 176 pp.

"Arranged in chronological order mainly, this book examines the initial development of Chinese journalism in ancient times, which from then manifested strong political attributes. After the Opium War in 1840, missionaries and businessmen from the West started to set up newspapers and periodicals in ... more

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