"This is a broad overview of the role of information in various forms for key actors in dictatorships, including members of the regime, dissident leaders, and the general public. The existing literature implies that information is crucial to the dynamic interactions among these actors, particularly in the contentious arenas of elections and collective actions. Not surprisingly, dictatorships create unique challenges for the control, dissemination, and acquisition of information. Strategic secrecy on the part of the dictator leads other actors to question the truthfulness of information he disseminates. To gain credibility in these environments, leaders need to constrain their actions. To appease elites, they can adopt constraining institutions like semi-independent legislatures and elections. When they hope to mobilize the opposition to legitimize these institutions and the masses to demonstrate the strength of their support, dictators must make costly payments, or policy and procedural concessions to get the defiant participants to acquiesce. Dissident leaders and the masses also find communication a difficult task. Dissident leaders often must take costly actions to earn the trust of the masses and help frame the benefits from collective actions in persuasive ways. When taking these actions, dissident leaders operate with limited quality information and must interpret signals from the government and other actors, which can dissuade people from acting or may lead to costly mistakes as the real meaning can get lost in the transmission of secretive information from dissident leaders to prospective participants." (Conclusion)