commbox Authoritarian Regimes

Filter

274

Sort by:

Direction:

Download (1)

Is Telegram a “harbinger of Freedom”? The Performance, Practices, and Perception of Platforms as Political Actors in Authoritarian States

Mariëlle Wijermars, Tetyana Lokot

Post-Soviet Affairs, volume 38, issue 1-2 (2022), pp. 125-145

"This paper examines the practices, performance, and perceptions of the messaging platform Telegram as an actor in the 2020 Belarus protests, using publicly available data from Telegram’s public statements, protest-related Telegram groups, and media coverage. Developing a novel conceptualization o ... more

Download (1)

Russia's Vigilante YouTube Stars: Digital Entrepreneurship and Heroic Masculinity in the Service of Flexible Authoritarianism

Anna Schwenck

Europe-Asia Studies, volume 74, issue 7 (2022), pp. 1166-1189

"Combating illegal parking and drinking in public is the raison d’être of Russia’s best-known law-and-order youth initiatives, StopKham and Lev Protiv. These initiatives enforce and promote neotraditional morals amongst young people by challenging alleged offenders on camera and uploading the e ... more

Download (0)

Narrative russischer staatlicher Medien über Corona-Impfstoffe im Westen

Daria Zakharova

Russland-Analysen, issue 418 (2022), pp. 2-5

"Die überwiegende Mehrheit der Beiträge in russischen staatlichen Medien über Impfkampagnen im Westen haben eine negative Konnotation. Die Übertreibung der negativen Folgen einer Impfung mit Präparaten von BionTech/Pfizer und Moderna sowie die Überzeichnung der angeblich massenhaften Unzufried ... more

Download (1)

The Revolution Will be Televised in Arabic: Iran’s Media Infrastructure Abroad

Hamdi Malik

Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy (2022), 19 pp.

"The media space is increasingly becoming yet another battlefield for the Islamic Republic to consolidate its hegemony throughout the Middle East. Iran’s media outreach, particularly in Arabic, is only likely to increase, especially online. Supreme Leader Khamenei is keen to see more activities do ... more

Download (1)

You Are What You Read: Media, Identity, and Community in the 2020 Belarusian Uprising

Samuel A. Greene

Post-Soviet Affairs, volume 38, issue 1-2 (2022), pp. 88-106

"The movement that mobilized to oppose Alyaksandr Lukashenka in August 2020 was notable for its ability to bridge divisions of social class, geography, age, and identity. Almost uniquely among post-Soviet revolutionary movements, the Belarusians who rose up were not divided from those who did not al ... more

Download (1)

Counter-Hegemonic Collaborations or Alliances of the Underdogs? The Case of TeleSUR with Al-Mayadeen, RT and CGTN

Pablo Sebastian Morales

Global Media and Communication, volume 18, issue 3 (2022), pp. 365-382

"This study explores how news channels from the Global South challenge western narratives by co-producing TV programmes. It focuses on Telesur (Venezuela) and its collaborations with RT (Russia), Al-Mayadeen (Lebanon) and CCTV/CGTN (China). By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this pap ... more

Download (1)

Media Usage and Political Trust Among Young Adults in China: The Role of Media Credibility, Trust in Sources and Political Membership

Qiong Gong, Marc Verboord, Yijing Wang

Global Media and Communication, volume 18, issue 3 (2022), pp. 301-321

"On the basis of an online survey conducted among young Chinese adults, this study examines how the association between media usage and political trust can be explained by three factors: the mediating roles of the perceived credibility of traditional and social media; the moderating roles of trust i ... more

Download (1)

Russia – YouTube and Global Platforms: A New Battleground for Russian Journalists and Bloggers

Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan

Potsdam: Friedrich Naumann Foundation (2022), 13 pp.

"In the late 2010s, the Internet overtook television as the most popular media format in Russia. It was also the time when Russian-speaking YouTube went political: well-known bloggers started producing political content, opposition politicians became the most popular YouTubers, and finally mainstrea ... more

Download (1)

Russlands unabhängiger Journalismus: Der harte Überlebenskampf unter totalitären Repressionsmaßnahmen

Sergej Parkhomenko

Potsdam: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (2022), 39 pp.

"Der Journalist und Verleger Sergej Parkhomenko ist ein international gefeierter Menschenrechtsverteidiger, Oppositionsaktivist und unter den russischen Medienschaffenden einer der wichtigsten Partner für das Internationale Journalisten- und Mediendialogprogramm (IJMD) der Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftun ... more

Download (1)

Russia: "You Will be Arrested Anyway." Reprisals Against Monitors and Media Workers Reporting from Protests

London: Amnesty International (2022), 48 pp.

"This document looks into the human rights violations committed against two specific groups who play important roles for the enjoyment of the right to peaceful assembly. The first group – public assembly monitors – performs a watchdog function by recording how rigorously the authorities observe ... more

Download (1)

Winning the Web: How Beijing Exploits Search Results to Shape Views of Xinjiang and COVID-19

Jessica Brandt, Bret Schafer, Elen Aghekyan, Valerie Wirtschafter, Adya Danaditya

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 ... more

Download (1)

»For a Journalist, Keeping Silent is a Crime«. Russian Independent Media: Caught Between Responsibility and Wartime Censorship

Daria Gordeva

Journalistik. Zeitschrift für Journalismusforschung, volume 5, issue 2 (2022), pp. 163-171

"It did not take long after the first Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine for the Russian government to tighten its censorship laws. The Duma (parliament), the media supervisory authority Roskomnadzor, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Ministry of Justice joined forces to com ... more

Download (1)

Steuerung der öffentlichen Meinung

Russland-Analysen, issue 418 (2022), pp. 1-14

"Wie denken gewöhnliche Russ:innen wirklich über die Entscheidung von Präsident Putin, in die Ukraine einzumarschieren? Obwohl einiges dafürspricht, dass frühere Umfragen, die Zustimmungswerte um 60 % für den Krieg zeigen, als genuine Signale der russischen öffentlichen Meinung gewertet werde ... more

Download (0)

The Kremlin's Troll Network Never Sleeps: Inauthentic Pro-Kremlin Online Behavior on Facebook in Germany, Italy, Romania and Hungary

Lóránt Gyori, Csaba Molnár, Péter Krekó, Patrik Szicherle et al.

Budapest: Political Capital Institute (2022), 36 pp.

"The research – based on programmatic text-mining supported analyses of several millions of war-related comments scraped by Sentione and further examined with CrowdTangle - found traces of inauthentic, repetitive pro-Kremlin activity on Facebook in all countries under review, which can be consider ... ed attempts to influence public opinion in the affected states and, in some cases, beyond them. Our main conclusions are: Crises help the Kremlin. Even if public opinion in the EU is currently unfavorable to the Kremlin, the onset of high, permanent inflation, soaring energy prices and the looming danger of an EU-wide recession could create a more favorable environment for the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts. Most (covertly) Kremlin-friendly forces will adopt a rhetoric blasting sanctions for harming Europe more than Russia. Importing disinformation narratives. Three out of the four narratives found in Hungary were imported into the country from abroad. One doubting Ukraine’s existence as a country started from an organization connected to Ukrainian pro-Putin oligarch Viktor Medvechuk, taken over by the so-called “news agency” of separatists. Another narrative detailing a new, dictatorial world order based on, among others, COVID-19 restrictions, and led by NATO was aimed at developing countries where Russia can hope to hold more sway. The third essentially took over a trend in the Russian media space: users tried to discredit anti-war voices by asking them “where they were in the past eight years” when Ukraine committed atrocities against minorities. Strategies in Germany: Divide and Rule. The six relevant narratives we found in Germany employed three different strategies. The first was anti-Westernism, where the US and NATO are to blame for Russia’s attack. The second aimed clearly at generating debates by spreading a Kremlin-critical narrative. Some profiles involved in this were caught disseminating both pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin narratives, which indicates it is not intended to counter the Kremlin’s information operation but to be a part of it. The third strategy was about exploiting contemporary events - such as heightened discussions on sanctions and rising inflation." (Executive summary) more

External Link (13)

Media Assistance in Burma’s Reform Decade

Jane Madlyn McElhone

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2022), 35 pp.

"Using the coup as a vantage point, interviewees for this report were asked to reflect on three main questions: What have we learned about past media reform efforts? With hindsight, what are the legacies, best practices, and lessons learned? With a view to the future, what does the media’s respons ... more

External Link (14)

Defending Democracy in Exile: Policy Responses to Transnational Repression

Yana Gorokhovskaia, Linzer. Isabel

Washington, DC: Freedom House (2022), 42 pp.

"Transnational repression is strategically employed by autocrats, enabled by underprepared host governments, and spreading rapidly around the world. This report aims to assess the strengths and weaknesses in the global understanding of and responses to transnational repression, so that governments, ... more

External Link (12)

Fair Game: The Endangered Media Space for Foreign Correspondents Inside China 2022

Mary Kay Magistad

Brussels: International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) (2022), 10 pp.

"This report focuses on Beijing's efforts to control domestic reporting by resident foreign journalists. It is based on interviews conducted by the IFJ in December 2021 with 19 current or recent correspondents from nine countries, who work across print and broadcast and whose experience in China ran ... more

External Link (14)

Effectiveness of the Sanctions on Russian State-Affiliated Media in the European Union: An Investigation Into Website Traffic and Possible Circumvention Methods

Kata Balint, Jordan Wildon, Francesca Arcostanzo, Kevin D. Reyes

Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2022), 20 pp.

"The purpose of this research is two-fold: first, to assess the effectiveness of the restrictions placed on Russian state-affiliated media by the European Union after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; second, to unearth potential circumvention methods and their success in enabling pro-Kr ... more

Google Scholar (10)

WorldCat (12)

Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media

Marc Owen Jones

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 ... more

External Link (12)

Limitations of Anti-War Messaging Oriented at Russians

Fyodor Krashennikov

Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2022), 11 pp.

"This paper offers a critical overview of anti-war propaganda in the Russian language during the first six months of the war and identifies the reasons for its limited success. After a review of the challenges to current forms of propaganda, the paper offers practical recommendations to improve the ... more