Journalism in Authoritarian Societies

Abstract

Despite the transnational nature of the journalistic profession, there is no common history of journalism, hence research of journalism in authoritarian societies is anchored in the study of manipulation and censorship. The history of censorship is much older than journalism, yet it is the emergence of journalism that led authoritarian regimes to create censorship mechanisms and systems aimed at reining in critical, independent voices and narratives. Absolutist monarchies established the first censorship models whose purpose was to control the periodical press in its early years. Following a brief period during the 19th century when censorship systems were eliminated almost everywhere in Europe, sophisticated forms of censorship, unseen before, reappeared and flourished in the next century. The most repressive ones were developed by fascist dictatorships in several European nations and by the Soviet regime in Russia. A bevy of authoritarian regimes across the world found much inspiration in these models and copied them, especially the Soviet censorship system, during the Cold War period. After a period of revival of media freedom in the aftermath of the Soviet Union collapse during the early 1990s, an increasing number of countries, including the successors of the former Soviet republics, restored authoritarian practices with important consequences for news media and journalists. Tight censorship systems are still in place in a variety of countries across the globe ranging from North Korea to China to Venezuela to Eritrea. Their response to manipulation and censorship varies broadly from country to country, depending on the effectiveness of the censorship systems and other contextual factors including economic and technological development, levels of literacy, and local cultural codes. At the same time, media capture whereby governments use businesses to achieve control over the media has been on the rise too in countries as diverse as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Egypt, Nicaragua, and Sri Lanka. The rise of new technologies of communication fueled a rapid expansion of the Internet, creating unprecedented opportunities for journalists to reach out to their audiences in new, innovative ways. At the same time, this technological growth empowered an increasing number of governments to design new and more effective forms of control and censorship.