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Rationalizing the Gap: How Journalists in a Nondemocratic Regime Make Sense of Their Professional Work

Tatsiana Karaliova

International Journal of Communication, volume 14 (2020), pp. 4781-4802

"This article investigates how news professionals in a nondemocratic regime rationalize their institutional roles and daily reporting practices, negotiate boundaries of their work, and make sense of their professional activities. This study used qualitative interviewing to explore personal experienc ... more

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The Public Sphere in Russia Between Authoritarianism and Liberation

Tatiana Weiser, Greg Yudin (eds.)

Javnost: The Public, volume 27, issue 1 (2020), pp. 2-96

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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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Conveying Truth: Independent Media in Putin’s Russia

Ann Cooper

Politics and Public Policy Shorenstein Center on Media (2020), 39 pp.

"This study examines the evolution of independent Russian media, from the glasnost era to the pandemic. It describes some of the pandemic coverage and identifies several of the newsrooms that gave Russians reliable, accountability journalism throughout the early months of the crisis. It may seem obv ... more

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How Dictators Control the Internet: A Review Essay

Eda Keremoglu, Nils B. Weidmann

Comparative Political Studies, volume 53, issue 10-11 (2020), pp. 1690-1703

"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 diff ... 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

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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

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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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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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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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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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The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies
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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television

Sabina Mihelj, Simon Huxtable

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2018), xiii, 369 pp.

"[The authors] delve into the fascinating world of television under communism, using it to test a new framework for comparative media analysis. To understand the societal consequences of mass communication, the authors argue that we need to move beyond the analysis of media systems, and instead focu ... more

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Russia's Liberal Media: Handcuffed But Free

Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova

New York; London: Routledge (2018), 221 pp.

"This book examines the challenges and pressures liberal journalists face in Putin's Russia. It presents the findings of an in-depth qualitative study, which included ethnographic observations of editorial meetings during the conflict in Ukraine. It also provides a theoretical framework for evaluati ... more

The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies Top Insights

The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies
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