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Authoritarianism is in the ascendancy across the globe, with digital technologies being used by both governments and non-state actors to repress rights and freedoms. Competing terms have emerged to conceptualize such use of digital technologies, including the term digital authoritarianism and a range of related terms including ‘networked authoritarianism’, ‘digital repression’, and ‘techno-authoritarianism’ which are used across different disciplines. Much of the existing literature uses these terms without clear definition, often referring to a diverse range of actions and measures. This lack of clarity undermines the basis for comparative research to advance knowledge and to determine how best to mitigate or overcome the negative effects of digital authoritarianism on democracy and development. This paper presents the first systematic literature review of digital authoritarianism and related terms. It contributes to generating conceptual clarity on digital authoritarianism and on its component elements, identifies gaps in the existing scholarship, and proposes a future research agenda.
Roberts et al. (Sun,) studied this question.