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The Unfreedom Monitor: Kyrgyzstan Country Report
Amsterdam: Global Voices Advox (2023), 24 pp.
"[...] The research has revealed that the incumbent Kyrgyz government is actively suppressing dissent by engaging in information manipulation, passing restrictive laws and attacking free media and investigative journalism. The Kyrgyz government has introduced new laws to regulate online activity, an
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The Unfreedom Monitor: Observatory Report
Amsterdam: Global Voices Advox (2023), 62 pp.
"Authoritarian practices are not strictly limited to authoritarian states; they are employed by regimes that span the political spectrum. The research approach argues for expanding the understanding of key authoritarian strategies to include persuasion alongside coercion and cooptation, which are id
...
Deepening the Response to Authoritarian Information Operations in Latin America
Washington, DC: National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (2023), 29 pp.
"The essays in this report deepen our understanding of the escalating and evolving threats posed by global authoritarianism. While responses to authoritarian information manipulation have been robust in many ways across Latin America, much more can be done to counter it and enhance the quality of in
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Digit@l China: Überwachungsdiktatur und technologische Avantgarde
München: Beck (2023), 190 pp.
"Mit parteistaatlicher Unterstützung avancierten die großen IT-Unternehmen Chinas seit Ende der 1990er Jahre schnell zu den Motoren der am dynamischsten wachsenden Digitalwirtschaft der Welt. Sie adaptierten zunächst Produkte und Geschäftsmodelle aus dem Ausland, gingen danach aber eigene Wege.
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Media Capture and Journalism as Emotional Labor: How Do Media Professionals Manage Bureaucratic Violence in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq?
Journalism Studies, volume 24, issue 7 (2023), pp. 876-895
"This paper focuses on the (in)direct tools of governmental bureaucracy used to control journalistic work in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). It calls for understanding media capture not only through structural-level consequences, but also through the methods used to create an environment of inst
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The Unfreedom Monitor: Hungary Country Report
Amsterdam: Global Voices Advox (2023), 32 pp.
"Incidents that illustrate how digital authoritarianism works in Hungary can be grouped into three categories: gaining control over critical digital infrastructure, silencing and intimidation of dissenting voices, and the use of law to undermine people’s rights. The report demonstrates how these d
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Why Does the Kremlin's Propaganda Remain Effective in Wartime?
Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2022), 10 pp.
"This paper will outline the technologies and mechanisms of Putin's information machine, how it operates during the war and the obstacles to anti-war propaganda among Russians. At the very end, we will offer some recommendations for confronting Putin's information machine at war, both of a general n
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How Big Data Can Bolster Autocratic Legitimacy (Via the Rhetoric of Safety and Convenience)
Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2022), 14 pp.
"This Policy Brief examines the different ways in which big data collection serves autocratic agendas by hiding the oppressive potential of heightened surveillance through promises of enhanced safety, convenience, and modernisation. Political actors with autocratic agendas can package their governan
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Russian Disinformation Efforts on Social Media
Santa Monica: RAND Corporation (2022), xviii, 202 pp.
"We sought to better understand Russia's disinformation on social media and generate recommendations to better meet and counter this evolving threat. We relied on an analysis of Russian military literature, investigative efforts, official reports, academic and policy literature, media reporting, and
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Turkey’s Communicative Authoritarianism
Global Media and Communication, volume 16, issue 1 (2022), pp. 102-120
"The majority of current political communication studies focus on discursive dimensions of communications and disregard how communications partake in the governing of populations through economic, material and institutional practices. By focusing on Turkey’s case, here I move beyond this approach
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Media and Democratic Backsliding: Lessons from the Turkish Case
Athens; Berlin: Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP); Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) (2022), 7 pp.
"In Turkey, the AKP came to power in 2002 at a time marked by a relatively pro-European Union and pluralistic outlook in politics. The democratic backsliding in Turkey has been more obvious since 2007 and the start of the AKP’s second term in power. It deepened especially after the 2016 coup attem
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A battle of two pandemics: Coronavirus and digital authoritarianism in the Arab World
In: Cyber War & Cyber Peace: Digital Conflict in the Middle East
London; New York: Tauris (2022), pp. 161-178
"This chapter explores the current wave of coronavirus-related digital crackdowns in the Arab region, which are unfolding in multiple forms, and analyzes its causes, contexts, and consequences. It explores why and how the stifling of media freedom and freedom of speech online in the Arab region has
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Choosing Propaganda: Media Selection and Politics in Putin's Russia
Los Angeles: University of California, Doctoral Thesis (2022), xiv, 160 pp.
"The results of this dissertation suggest that most Russians are aware, at least to some degree, of the biases of state media. Nonetheless, they still consider these sources to provide valuable information. This, in part, stems from beliefs about the access these news outlets have to information and
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The Unfreedom Monitor: Zimbabwe Country Report
Amsterdam: Global Voices Advox (2022), 28 pp.
"The government of Zimbabwe and the ruling ZANU PF party are bent on ensuring that the status quo is preserved at all costs. As evidenced by findings in the Civic Media Observatory, the digital sphere has been identified as a threat to the country’s national security, insofar as deposing the curre
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Winning the Web: How Beijing Exploits Search Results to Shape Views of Xinjiang and COVID-19
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution (2022), 47 pp.
"For months, our team has been tracking how China has exploited search engine results on Xinjiang and COVID-19, two subjects that are geopolitically salient to Beijing — Xinjiang, because the Chinese government seeks to push back on condemnation of its rights record; COVID-19, because it seeks to
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The Unfreedom Monitor: Turkey Country Report
Amsterdam: Global Voices Advox (2022), 27 pp.
"Since its ascent to power twenty years ago, the ruling AKP has tightened the screws on all forms of freedom of expression, both online and offline. It has introduced draconian laws, imposed internet restrictions, blocked content, and has arrested and intimidated critics on an unprecedented level. I
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The Informational Dictator's Dilemma: Citizen Responses to Media Censorship and Control in Russia and Belarus
PONARS Eurasia (2022), 9 pp.
"The findings described in this memo strongly suggest that "softer" strategies of media cooptation are more effective than harsher, more coercive approaches to media control. In Russia, where the Kremlin has-until very recently-used a combination of commercial pressure and political influence to pus
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Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media
London: Hurst & Company (2022), 303 pp.
"By the time readers arrive at the end of Jones’s astonishing examination of social media in the Middle East, they will be completely persuaded that it is now impossible to tell whether anything they read online is true. Replete with bots and sock puppets, trolls and dupes, this online world is bo
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Russian Social Network VK Gains Carte Blanche Following the Closure of Instagram and Facebook in the Country
Russia Analytical Digest, issue 280 (2022), pp. 20-21
"As the Russian invasion of Ukraine erupted, the country’s authorities declared a war on Western social media as well. In March, such social media giants as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were blocked in Russia, giving their local competitor—named VK—a virtual monopoly in the country. Millio
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Trapped in a Web: The Exploitation of Personal Data in Hungary’s 2022 Elections
Human Rights Watch (2022), 94 pp.
"On April 3, 2022, Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party won a fourth term in national elections, cementing its dominance with a two-thirds majority that will allow it to continue traveling what critics of the party and many others would describe as the path of centralizing power and rolling back democrat
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