Anita R. Gohdes (Hertie School) joined the EU-RENEW Webinar Series to present her new book, 'Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence' (Oxford University Press, 2023). Dr. Philip De Man (KU Leuven) served as discussant.
About the book: Global adoption of the Internet has exploded, and we are only slowly coming to understand the profound political consequences it brings with it. Authoritarian states are digitally catching up with their democratic counterparts, and both are showing a growing interest the use of cyber controls-online censorship and surveillance technologies that allow governments to exercise control over the Internet. This book shines a light on how these powerful new technologies are supporting states in their use of violent repression. It presents an argument that explains under what conditions a digitally connected society actually helps states target their enemies, why repressive governments sometimes shut down the Internet when faced with uprisings, and how these cyber controls have become a tool in the weapons arsenal that states use in civil conflict. The book presents large-scale analyses of fine-grained data on the Syrian conflict, qualitative case evidence from Iran, and global comparative analysis on Internet outages to examine the complicated relationship between these technologies and repression. Taken together, the findings show that cyber controls are supporting security forces in their use of violent state repression: higher levels of Internet accessibility support more targeted violence, in particular in sectors of society that were previously shielded from state reach. Extreme forms of censorship or even shutdowns of the Internet occur in conjunction with larger and more indiscriminate repression. As digital communication has become a bedrock of modern opposition and protest movements the book breaks new ground in examining state repression in the information age.
Discussant: Dr. Philip De Man
Moderator: Dr. Kari Otteburn