In most autocratic regimes, governmental interference in digital infrastructure and communication is commonplace. Governments control where and when modern communication technology (ICT) is introduced in the first place, who gets access to it, and what information is communicated. This influence occurs for political motives—to ban opposition activists from mobilizing their followers online, to contain the spread of information that is critical of the regime, or to spy on the population to identify potential dissenters. Examples include Hosni Mubarak’s complete internet shutdown in January 2011 (Dainotti et al., 2014), or the censoring of online content deemed unacceptable by the Chinese government (King et al., 2013). In this review article, we take stock of the literature on autocratic interference in internet communication, but also identify gaps and propose pathways for future research.
