Week 02
Media Systems in Authoritarian Regimes
Required Reading
The Internet Has Overtaken TV
Digital Dimensions of Propaganda: Technological, Doctrinal, and Organisational Shifts in Authoritarian Strategic Communication
Reading guidance: Chapter 3.
Further Reading
Media Structures
Serge Poliakoff and Julia Kling
“Mapping the Disinformation Industry in Russia”
New Media & Society (2026)
Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts
Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics
Oxford University Press (2018)
Reading guidance: Chapters 2–3.
Maria Repnikova
Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism
Cambridge University Press (2017)
Bilge Yesil
“Social Media Manipulation in Turkey: Actors, Tactics, Targets”
In The Routledge Companion to Media Disinformation and Populism (2021), pp. 386–396
Bilge Yesil
Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State
University of Illinois Press (2016)
Marc Owen Jones
Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media
Hurst (2022)
Reading guidance: Chapters 1–3.
Dechun Zhang
Digital Nationalism and Affective Governance: Propaganda, Public Sentiment, and Soft Authoritarianism in China
Routledge (2026)
Reading guidance: Chapters 1–2.
Pressures on Independent Media
Bilge Yesil
“Press Censorship in Turkey: Networks of State Power, Commercial Pressures, and Self-Censorship”
Communication, Culture & Critique (2014)
Aim Sinpeng
“Digital Media, Political Authoritarianism, and Internet Controls in Southeast Asia”
Media, Culture & Society (2020)
Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Zainab Abdul-Nabi
“Authoritarian Downgrading, (Self)Censorship and New Media Activism after the Arab Spring”
New Media & Society (2021)
Communication Language
Andrew Bulovsky
“Authoritarian Communication on Social Media: The Relationship between Democracy and Leaders’ Digital Communicative Practices”
International Communication Gazette (2019)