Digital Threats to Democracy: Ruling with a Silicon Fist

The first tactic in the digital authoritarian toolkit is to establish information walls through fear, friction, or flooding. While employing traditional methods of repression and punishment to censor through fear, digital authoritarians also make it more difficult for citizens to access information through internet shutdowns, firewalls, and paywalls. In addition, digital dictators target traditional democratic values and freedoms by flooding the internet and other outlets for speech, press, and assembly. Inauthentic accounts ("bots"), deepfakes, and new tools of digital propaganda help states amplify narratives, build polarization, and increase "us versus them" divisions. With information walls, regimes can shape public opinion in newly-sophisticated ways by establishing state control over the messages their population can access--and the information they do not.