How Dictators Control the Internet: A Review Essay

Abstract

A growing body of research has studied how autocratic regimes interfere with internet communication to contain challenges to their rule. In this review article, we survey the literature and identify the most important directions and challenges for future research. We structure our review along different network layers, each of which provides particular ways of governmental influence and control. While current research has made much progress in understanding individual digital tactics, we argue that there is still a need for theoretical development and empirical progress. First, we need a more comprehensive understanding of how particular tactics fit into an overall digital strategy, but also how they interact with traditional, “offline” means of autocratic politics, such as cooptation or repression. Second, we discuss a number of challenges that empirical research needs to address, such as the effectiveness of digital tactics, the problem of attribution, and the tool dependence of existing research.

Informational Autocrats

“…The annual rate of such killings among nondemocracies peaked in 1992 at 33 percent but since then has fallen sharply, reaching 12 percent in 2013. 3 We also collected data on the number of political prisoners and detainees held under each authoritarian leader. We focus on the year in which the reported number in jail for political reasons was highest because complete annual counts were not available.…”

“…In online Appendix A, available with this article at the Journal of Economic Perspectives website,Figure A2shows a graph similar to the one in the text, but excluding all dictators whose terms overlapped with civil wars or major insurgencies.Figure A3includes only leaders who served no more than ten years (and who had left office by the end of 2015), again excluding civil war cases 3. For an illustration of this point, seeFigure A1in online Appendix A 4.…”

Dissent Networks, State Repression, and Strategic Clemency for Defection

“…The other body of research emphasizes the choice between targeted and indiscriminate violence and ties states’ information capacity close to the use of different repression strategies. Primarily driven by discussions on state violence in civil war (Kalyvas, 2006; Lyall, 2009; Kalyvas and Kocher, 2009; Souleimanov et al, 2013; Zhukov, 2014; Balcells, 2017; Rozenas and Zhukov, 2019), this line of research suggests that governments use targeted violence when they already have good intelligence on insurgents’ identities and activities. By contrast, untargeted violence is used to indiscriminately repress all individuals within an area where regimes lack local intelligence (suggesting insufficient local control) even though killing innocent people can drive recruitment to insurgents and eventually hurt the regime.…”

More than plain text: Censorship deletion in the Chinese social media

“…The former refers to investigating regime policy and the policing of Internet censorship, such as regulatory control (Esarey & Kluver, 2014; MacKinnon, 2008; Pan, 2017; Zhang, 2006), as well as the technical infrastructure of the “Great Firewall of China” (Barme & Ye, 1997), such as techniques of filtering, domain name system (DNS) poisoning, and virtual private network blocking (Clayton, Murdoch, & Watson, 2007; Deibert et al, 2008; Lowe, Winters, & Marcus, 2007). For instance, drawing on a technology‐centered structure, Keremoğlu and Weidmann's review (2020) specifies the forms of interference and controls used by the Chinese government at the infrastructural, network, and application layers in an effort to contain challenges to its rule. In short, the top‐down approach encompasses macro‐level policy and the legal and technological aspects of Internet censorship.…”

“…Despite the vision of the Internet as a free, independent space, online censorship is flourishing and becoming more complex thanks to technological advancements (e.g., Deibert, Palfrey, Rohozinski, & Zittrain, 2011; Deibert & Rohozinski, 2010; Keremoğlu & Weidmann, 2020; Roberts, 2020). Two‐thirds of Internet users live with some type of online censorship (Agence France‐Presse & Beall, 2016).…”