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100 _aTrauthig, I.K., Martin, Z.C. and Woolley, S.C.
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245 _aMessaging apps: A rising tool for informational autocrats
260 _aPolitical Research Quarterly
300 _a77(1), Mar, 2024: p.17-29
520 _aSocial media have caused adaptations to existing conceptualizations of democratization, democratic backsliding, and authoritarian hardening. One attempt to capture how social media may solidify authoritarian tendencies while maintaining the government’s popularity is the concept of informational autocracies: rule primarily through the manipulation of information. In this paper, we contribute to Guriev and Treisman’s conceptualizations, who coined the term “informational autocrats” and relied on case studies from around the world. Overall, we expand on existing literature on social media and informational autocracies via a discussion of encrypted messaging apps (e.g., WhatsApp or Telegram) in such contexts. Using a qualitative comparative approach consisting of 68 interviews across 11 country case studies, our analyses demonstrate that the relative secrecy offered by encryption messaging apps can benefit state propagandists and authoritarian tendencies.- Reproduced https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129231190932
773 _aPolitical Research Quarterly
906 _aSOCIAL MEDIA
942 _cAR