The Political Effects of Social Media Platforms on Different Regime Types

1 Anna Lührmann, et al., Autocratization Surges – Resistance Grows: Democracy Report 2020, Varieties of Democracy Institute, 2020, https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/de/39/de39af54-0bc5-4421-89ae-fb20dcc53dba/democracy_report.pdf.

2 Fareed Zakaria, “The Self-Destruction of American Power: Washington Squandered the Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 4 (July/August 2019): 10–16, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-06-11/self-destruction-american-power.

3 Barry R. Posen, “The Rise of Illiberal Hegemony: Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 2 (March/April 2018): 20–27. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-02-13/rise-illiberal-hegemony; and Richard Haass, “How a World Order Ends: And What Comes in Its Wake,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 1 (January/February 2019): 22–30. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-12-11/how-world-order-ends.

4 Ronald Inglehart, “The Age of Insecurity: Can Democracy Save Itself?” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 3 (May/June 2018): 20–28, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-04-16/age-insecurity.

5 Lionel Barber, Henry Foy, and Alex Barker, “Vladimir Putin Says Liberalism Has ‘Become Obsolete,’” Financial Times, June 27, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/670039ec-98f3-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36.

6 Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa, “The End of the Democratic Century: Autocracy’s Global Ascendance,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 3 (May/June 2018): 29–38, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-04-16/end-democratic-century.

7 For social media and the rise of populism, see John Postill, “Populism and Social Media: A Global Perspective,” Media, Culture & Society 40, no. 5 (July 2018): 754–65, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718772186; Paolo Gerbaudo, “Social Media and Populism: An Elective Affinity?” Media, Culture & Society 40, no. 5 (July 2018): 745–53, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718772192; and Sven Engesser, et al., “Populism and Social Media: How Politicians Spread a Fragmented Ideology,” Information, Communication and Society 20, no. 8 (August 2017): 1109–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1207697. For social media in Latin America, see Miguel Angel Latouche, “Latin American Presidents Love Twitter – and That’s Not a Good Sign,” The Conversation, March 22, 2017, https://theconversation.com/latin-american-presidents-love-twitter-and-thats-not-a-good-sign-74913. For social media and America’s 2016 elections, see Kevin Poulsen, Ben Collins, and Spencer Ackerman, “Exclusive: Russia Used Facebook Events to Organize Anti-Immigrant Rallies on U.S. Soil,” Daily Beast, Sept. 13, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-russia-used-facebook-events-to-organize-anti-immigrant-rallies-on-us-soil; and Kevin Poulsen, et al., “Exclusive: Russians Appear to Use Facebook to Push Trump Rallies in 17 U.S. Cities,” Daily Beast, Sept. 20, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-appear-to-use-facebook-to-push-pro-trump-flash-mobs-in-florida.

8 Sarah Kreps, Social Media and International Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 32–43.

9  Siva Vaidhyanathan, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press: 2019): 102–03.

10 Connie Chan, “When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China,” Andreessen Horowitz, Aug. 6, 2015, https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/.

11 Nick Statt and Shannon Liao, “Facebook Wants to Be WeChat,” The Verge, March 8, 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18256226/facebook-wechat-messaging-zuckerberg-strategy.

12 Larry Diamond, “Liberation Technology,” Journal of Democracy 21, no. 3 (July 2010): 69–83, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Diamond-21-3.pdf.

13 John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, Feb. 8, 1996, https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence.

14 Lucie Greene, Silicon States: The Power and Politics of Big Tech and What It Means for Our Future (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2019), 36–95.

15 Mark Zuckerberg, “Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement Address at Harvard,” Harvard Gazette, May 25, 2017, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/05/mark-zuckerbergs-speech-as-written-for-harvards-class-of-2017/.

16 Mark Zuckerberg, “Building Global Community,” Facebook, Feb. 16, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10154544292806634/.

17 Franklin Foer, “Facebook’s War on Free Will,” The Guardian, Sept. 19, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks-war-on-free-will.

18 Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, “The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power,” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 6 (November/December 2010): 75–85, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20788718.

19  Clay Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 1 (January/February 2011): 28–41, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25800379.

20 Ahmed Shehabat, Arab 2.0 Revolutions: Investigating Social Media Networks During Waves of the Egyptian Political Uprisings that Occur Between 2011, 2012 and 2013, University of Western Sydney, M.A Diss., 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322382260_Arab_20_revolutions_investigating_social_media_networks_during_waves_of_the_Egyptian_political_uprisings_that_occur_between_2011_2012_and_2013.

21 P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 86.

22 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), 81.

23 Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media,” 28–41.

24 For the revolt in Moldova, see Ethan Zuckerman, “The First Twitter Revolution?” Foreign Policy, Jan. 15, 2011, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/15/the-first-twitter-revolution-2/. For the unrest in Iran, see Andrew Sullivan, “The Revolution Will Be Twittered,” The Atlantic, June 13, 2009, http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/06/the-revolution-will-betwittered/200478/. For the unrest in Russia, see Jessica Tobin, We Are Not Afraid, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Undergraduate Diss., 2013,   https://globalstudies.unc.edu/files/2013/11/We-Are-Not-Afraid.pdf; and Stephen White and Ian McAllister, “Did Russia (Nearly) Have a Facebook Revolution in 2011? Social Media’s Challenge to Authoritarianism,” Politics 34, no. 1 (February 2014): 72–84, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9256.12037. For the first wave of Arab social unrest, see Denis G. Campbell, Egypt Unsh@ckled: Using Social Media to @#:) the System (Carmarthenshire, Wales: Cambria Books, 2011); and Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, “The Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 3 (July 2011): 35–48, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2011.0041. For the quote at the end of this sentence, see Roger Cohen, “Revolutionary Arab Geeks,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/opinion/28iht-edcohen28.html.

25 Singer and Brooking, LikeWar, 86.

26 Mark Zuckerberg, “Bringing the World Closer Together,” Facebook, June 22, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10154944663901634.

27 Zeynep Tufecki, “It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech,” Wired, Jan. 16, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/.

28 Adrian Shahbaz and Allie Funk, “The Crisis of Social Media,” Freedom House, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2019/crisis-social-media.

29 “Do Social Media Threaten Democracy?” The Economist, Nov. 4, 2017, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/11/04/do-social-media-threaten-democracy.

30 See Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech (New York: Penguin Press, 2017), 1–8; and Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (London: Bantam Press, 2017), 1–12.

31 Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Pinter, 1988), 115.

32 Matt Simon, “What This CIA Veteran Learned Helping Facebook with Elections,” Wired, July 24, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-knows-more-about-you-than-cia/.

33 Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019), 3–17.

34 Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), 15–72.

35 Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 6.

36 Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 8.

37 Karen Kornbluh, “The Internet’s Lost Promise: And How America Can Restore It,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 5 (September/October 2018): 33–38, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2018-08-13/internets-lost-promise; and Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, “The Data that Turned the World Upside Down,” Vice, Jan. 28, 2017, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win.

38 See Greene, Silicon States, 73–96; and Jeffrey Gottfried and Elisa Shearer, “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016,” Pew Research Center, May 26, 2016, https://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/.

39 Matthew Hindman, The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 1–14.

40 “Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter to Investors: ‘the Hacker Way,’” CNN, Feb. 1, 2012, https://money.cnn.com/2012/02/01/technology/zuckerberg_ipo_letter/index.htm.

41 Vaidhyanathan, Antisocial Media.

42 A “filter bubble” is a state of intellectual isolation that results from a website algorithm that selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior, and search history. See Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (London: Penguin Books, 2012). See also Carly Okyle, “Are You Living in a Digital Bubble? This Flowchart Will Tell You,” Entrepreneur, June 11, 2016, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277351.

43 Galloway, The Four, 119.

44 Ashesh Mukherjee, The Internet Trap: Five Costs of Living Online (Toronto: University of Toronto press, 2018), 42; and Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 71–76.

45 Zeynep Tufekci, “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer,” New York Times, March 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html; and Jack Nicas, “How YouTube Drives People to the Internet’s Darkest Corners,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 7, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-youtube-drives-viewers-to-the-internets-darkest-corners-1518020478.

46 Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow, “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 213, https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211.

47 Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” Science 359, no. 6380 (March 2018): 1146–51. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146.

48 Mukherjee, The Internet Trap, 44.

49 Libby Hogan and Michael Safi, “Revealed: Facebook Hate Speech Exploded in Myanmar During Rohingya Crisis,” The Guardian, April 2, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/revealed-facebook-hate-speech-exploded-in-myanmar-during-rohingya-crisis; and Michael Safi, “Sri Lanka Accuses Facebook Over Hate Speech After Deadly Riots,” The Guardian, March 14, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/14/facebook-accused-by-sri-lanka-of-failing-to-control-hate-speech.

50 Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It,” RAND Corporation, 2016, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html. For more about Russian intervention in elections see also David Alandete and Daniel Verdú, “How Russian Networks Worked to Boost the Far Right in Italy,” El Pais, March 1, 2018, https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2018/03/01/inenglish/1519922107_909331.html.

51 See Mike Isaac and Scott Shane, “Facebook’s Russia-Linked Ads Came in Many Disguises,” New York Times, Oct. 2, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/technology/facebook-russia-ads-.html; Poulsen, Collins, and Ackerman, “Russia Used Facebook Events to Organize Anti-Immigrant Rallies”; and Poulsen, et al., “Russians Appear to Use Facebook to Push Trump Rallies.”

52 Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig coined the term “sharp power” in order to describe the way in which authoritarian countries pierce, penetrate, or perforate the political and information environments in targeted countries. These regimes are not necessarily seeking to “win hearts and minds,” the common frame of reference for soft-power efforts. They are instead seeking to manipulate their target audiences by distorting the information that reaches them. Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, “The Meaning of Sharp Power,” Foreign Affairs, Nov. 16, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-11-16/meaning-sharp-power. See also Alina Polyakova and Chris Meserole, “Exporting Digital Authoritarianism,” Foreign Policy, August 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FP_20190826_digital_authoritarianism_polyakova_meserole.pdf.

53 Dominic Spohr, “Fake News and Ideological Polarization: Filter Bubbles and Selective Exposure on Social Media,” Business Information Review 34, no. 3 (September 2017): 150–60, https://doi.org/10.1177/0266382117722446; Philip H. Howard, “Our Data, Ourselves,” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/our-data-ourselves-democracy-technology-algorithms/; Art Swift, “Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low,” Gallup, Sept. 14, 2016, https://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-%20mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx; Brian Fonseca, “Russian Deceptive Propaganda Growing Fast in Latin America,” Global Americans, Aug. 7, 2018, https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/08/russian-deceptive-propaganda-growing-fast-in-latin-america/; and Charles Edel, “Democracy Is Fighting for Its Life,” Foreign Policy, Sept. 10, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/10/democracy-is-fighting-for-its-life/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14845&utm_term=Flashpoints%20OC.

54 Tufecki, “It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech.”

55 Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Erica Frantz, and Joseph Wright, “The Digital Dictators: How Technology Strengthens Autocracy,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 103–15, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-02-06/digital-dictators.

56 Shahbaz and Funk, “The Crisis of Social Media.”

57 Gerbaudo, “Social Media and Populism,” 745–53.

58 Shahbaz and Funk, “The Crisis of Social Media.”

59 “Countries and Territories,” Freedom House, accessed July 22, 2020, https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores; Anna Lührmann, Marcus Tannenberg, and Staffan I. Lindberg, “Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes,” Politics and Governance 6, no. 1, (2018): 60–77, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i1.1214; and Lührmann et al., Democracy Report 2020.

60 Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 35–43.

61 Christian, W. Haerpfer, et al., eds., Democratization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 2.

62 Robert Longley, “Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, and Fascism,” ThoughtCo., June 5, 2020, https://www.thoughtco.com/totalitarianism-authoritarianism-fascism-4147699.

63 Robert I. Rotberg, ed., State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror (Washington, DC; Cambridge, MA: Brookings Institute Press/World Peace Foundation, 2003), 1–28; and Ashley J. Tellis, et al., Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp., 2000), https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1110.html.

64 Benjamin Miller, International and Regional Security: The Causes of War and Peace (New York: Routledge, 2017), 109–10; and Susan E. Rice and Stewart Patrick, Index of State Weakness in the Developing World, Foreign Policy at Brookings, 2008, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/02_weak_states_index.pdf.

65 J.J. Messner de Latour, et al., “Fragile States Index 2020 — Annual Report,” The Fund for Peace, https://fragilestatesindex.org/2020/05/08/fragile-states-index-2020-annual-report/.

66 The Group Grievance Indicator focuses on divisions and schisms between different groups in society — particularly divisions based on social or political characteristics — and their inclusion in the political process. See “C3: Group Grievance,” Fragile States Index, accessed June 24, 2021, https://fragilestatesindex.org/indicators/c3/.

67 Polyakova and Meserole, “Exporting Digital Authoritarianism,” 6.

68 Regina Salanova, Social Media and Political Change: The Case of the 2011 Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, Institut Català Internacional per la Pau, Working Papers, 2012, http://hdl.handle.net/2072/205489.

69 Philip N.Howard, and Muzammil M. Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 24.

70 Bruce Etling, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey, “Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing,” SAIS Review 30, no. 2 (Summer-Fall 2010): 37-49, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4609956.

71 Laura Stein, “Social Movement Web Use in Theory and Practice: A Content Analysis of US Movement Websites,” New Media and Society 11, no. 5 (July 2009): 749–71, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809105350.

72 Howard and Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave, 21.

73 Howard and Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave, 26.

74 Killian Clarke and Korhan Kocak, “Launching Revolution: Social Media and the Egyptian Uprising’s First Movers,” British Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (July 2020): 1025–45, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123418000194.

75 Juby John Eipe, “Egypt Revolution 2.0: Tweets and Trends from Egypt,” IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science 19, no.1 (February 2014): 22–27, https://doi.org/10.9790/0837-191112227.

76 Howard and Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave, 66.

77 Tarak Barkawi, “The Globalisation of Revolution,” Al-Jazeera, March 21, 2011, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/03/2011320131934568573.html.

78 Paul Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions (London: Verso, 2012), 5–24.

79 Mohamed Ben Moussa, “From Arab Street to Social Movements: Re-theorizing Collective Action and the Role of Social Media in the Arab Spring,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 9, no. 2 (2013): 47–68, http://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.166.

80 Salanova, Social Media and Political Change.

81 Ian Black, “Egypt Protest Leaflets Distributed in Cairo Give Blueprint for Mass Action,” The Guardian, Jan. 27, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/27/egypt-protest-leaflets-mass-action.

82 Mark Pfeifle, “A Nobel Peace Prize for Twitter?” Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 2009, https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0706/p09s02-coop.html.

83 Howard and Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave, 66.

84 Oluwatosin Adeshokan, “How Social Media Propels Protests in Sudan,” TRT World, April 26, 2019, https://www.trtworld.com/africa/how-social-media-propels-protests-in-sudan-26185.

85 W.J. Berridge, “Briefing: The Uprising in Sudan,” African Affairs 119, no. 474 (January 2020): 164–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adz015.

86 Alexander Durie, “The Sudan Uprising and the Critical Role of Social Media,” The New Arab, Sept. 17, 2019, https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2019/9/17/sudans-uprising-and-the-critical-role-of-social-media.

87 Golnaz Esfandiari, “The Twitter Devolution,” Foreign Policy, June 8, 2010, https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/08/the-twitter-devolution/.

88 Etling, Faris, and Palfrey, “Political Change in the Digital Age,” 37–49.

89 Sean Aday, et al., Blogs and Bullets II: New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring, United States Institute of Peace, July 10, 2012, 5, https://www.usip.org/publications/2012/07/blogs-and-bullets-ii-new-media-and-conflict-after-arab-spring.

90 Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New York: Public Affairs: 2011), 1–32.

91 Ronald J. Deibert, “The Geopolitics of Internet Control: Censorship, Sovereignty, and Cyberspace,” in The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics, ed. Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard (London: Routledge, 2009), 323–36; and Shahbaz and Funk, “The Crisis of Social Media.”

92 Polyakova and Meserole, “Exporting Digital Authoritarianism.”

93 Guards at the Gate: The Expanding State Control Over the Internet in Iran, Center for Human Rights in Iran, January 2018, https://www.iranhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/EN-Guards-at-the-gate-High-quality.pdf.

94 Christopher Rhoads and Loretta Chao, “Iran’s Web Spying Aided by Western Technology,” Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124562668777335653.

95 Karen Kramer, “Iran’s Information Minister Is not the Solution. He’s Part of the Problem,” Foreign Policy, Nov. 4, 2019,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/04/irans-information-minister-is-not-the-solution-hes-part-of-the-problem.

96 Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (London: Yale University Press, 2017), 28.

97 Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas, 71.

98 Killian Clarke and Korhan Koçak, “Eight Years After Egypt’s Revolution, Here’s What We’ve Learned About Social Media and Protest,” Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/25/eight-years-after-egypts-revolution-heres-what-weve-learned-about-social-media-and-protest/.

99 Neil MacFarquhar, “Behind Armenia’s Revolt, Young Shock Troops from the Tech Sector,” New York Times, May 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/world/europe/armenia-revolt-tech-sector.html; and “Journalist Shot Dead While Broadcasting Live in Nicaragua as Death Toll Hits 25,” The Guardian, April 22, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/22/journalist-among-25-killed-as-unrest-escalates-in-nicaragua.

100 Shahbaz and Funk, “The Crisis of Social Media.”

101 Amy Erica Smith, “Signs of Democratic Demise in Latin America,” Vox, Feb. 14, 2018, https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2018/2/14/17012770/latin-america-democratic-demise; and Kurt Weyland, “Latin America’s Authoritarian Drift: The Threat from the Populist Left,” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 3 (July 2013):18–32, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2013.0045.

102 Lührmann, et al., Democracy Report 2020.

103 Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (New York: The New Press, 2015), 1–14.

104 Latouche, “Latin American Presidents.”

105 “Latin Americans Are the Most Avid Social Media Users,” eMarketer, Jan. 28, 2016, https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Latin-Americans-Most-Avid-Social-Media-Users/1013517.

106 Noah Kulwin, “WhatsApp Is Causing a Serious Fake News Problem in Brazil,” Vice, Jan. 17, 2018, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbpkyv/whatsapp-is-causing-a-serious-fake-news-problem-in-brazil.

107 Julia Gurganus, “Russia: Playing a Geopolitical Game in Latin America,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 3, 2018, https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/05/03/russia-playing-geopolitical-game-in-latin-america-pub-76228; Felicitas Carrique, “Another Chapter on Facebook’s Privacy Woes Is Being Written in Latin America,” Techcrunch, March 30, 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/30/another-chapter-on-facebooks-privacy-woes-is-being-written-in-latin-america/; Brian Fonseca, “Russian Deceptive Propaganda Growing Fast in Latin America,” Dialogo, July 24, 2018, https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/russian-deceptive-propaganda-growing-fast-in-latin-america/; and Kate Linthicum, “Mexico Has Its Own Fake News Crisis. These Journalists Are Fighting Back,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2018, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mexico-fake-news-20180415-story.html.

108 Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz, “How Democracies Fall Apart: Why Populism Is a Pathway to Autocracy,” Foreign Affairs, Dec. 5, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-12-05/how-democracies-fall-apart.

109 Bruno Araújo and Hélder Prior, “Framing Political Populism: The Role of Media in Framing the Election of Jair Bolsonaro,” Journalism Practice 15, no. 2 (2021): 226–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019.1709881.

110 Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2018), 1–20; Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Pennsylvania: Penguin Books, 2017), 19–25; and Linda Bos, Wouter van der Brug, and Claes de Vreese, “How the Media Shape Perceptions of Right-Wing Populist Leaders,” Political Communication 28, no. 2 (April 2011): 182–206, https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2011.564605.

111 Pippa Norris, “Is Western Democracy Backsliding? Diagnosing the Risks,” SSRN Electronic Journal, HKS Working Paper No. RWP17-012, March 16, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2933655.

112 Gerbaudo, “Social Media and Populism,” 747.

113 John Postill, “Populism and Social Media: A Global Perspective,” Media, Culture & Society 40, no. 5 (July 2018): 754–65, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0163443718772186.

114 Gerbaudo, “Social Media and Populism,” 745–53.

115 For the quote, see Renee Diresta, “Social Network Algorithms Are Distorting Reality by Boosting Conspiracy Theories,” Fast Company, May 11, 2016, https://www.fastcompany.com/3059742/social-network-algorithms-are-distorting-reality-by-boosting-conspiracy-theories. See also, Gerbaudo, “Social Media and Populism,” 745–53.

116 Fabrício H. Chagas-Bastos, “Political Realignment in Brazil: Jair Bolsonaro and the Right Turn,” Revista de Estudios Sociales, no. 69 (2019): 92–100, https://doi.org/10.7440/res69.2019.08.

117 Araújo and Prior, “Framing Political Populism.”

118 “Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s President, Is a Master of Social Media,” The Economist, March 16, 2019, https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/03/14/jair-bolsonaro-brazils-president-is-a-master-of-social-media.

119 Ciara Long, “Did Coordinated Misinformation Campaigns on Social Media Affect the Brazilian Presidential Elections?” Pacific Standard, Nov. 2, 2018, https://psmag.com/social-justice/misinformation-campaigns-mar-brazilian-elections.

120 Chagas-Bastos, “Political Realignment in Brazil,” 92–100.

121 Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power, “Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash,” Journal of Democracy 30, no. 1 (January 2019): 68–82, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0005.

122 Brian Winter, “What to Expect from Jair Bolsonaro,” Americas Quarterly, Oct. 9, 2018, https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/what-to-expect-from-jair-bolsonaro/.

123 Tom Daly, “Populism, Public Law, and Democratic Decay in Brazil: Understanding the Rise of Jair Bolsonaro,” SSRN Electronic Journal, April 3, 2019, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3350098.

124 Daly, “Populism, Public Law, and Democratic Decay.”

125 Samantha Bradshaw and Philip N. Howard, “Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation,” University of Oxford, Computational Propaganda Research Project, Working Paper No. 2017.12, 2017, https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2017/07/Troops-Trolls-and-Troublemakers.pdf; and Shahbaz and Funk, “The Crisis of Social Media.”

126 Robert Muggah, “Bolsonaro Is Following Trump’s Anti-Democracy Playbook,” Foreign Policy, Jan. 14, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/14/bolsonaro-brazil-trump-anti-democracy-elections/; Rafael Moro Martins, “After a Fight Over Control of Brazil’s Federal Police, Raids Target Bolsonaro’s Political Rivals,” The Intercept, May 31, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/05/31/police-raids-bolsonaro-political-moro/; and Mica Presley, “Democratic Backsliding and Personalization of Power in Brazil,” V-Dem, Feb. 18, 2021, https://www.v-dem.net/en/news/democratic-backsliding-and-personalization-power-brazil/.

127 Marina Pasquali, “Level of Support for Democracy in Brazil from 2008 to 2018,” Statistica, April 29, 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/782384/brazil-democracy-support-rates/.

128 Global Satisfaction with Democracy 2020, Bennett Institute for Public Policy, 2020, https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/DemocracyReport2020.pdf.

129 Winter, “What to Expect from Jair Bolsonaro.”

130 Julia Gurganus, “Russia: Playing a Geopolitical Game in Latin America,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 3, 2018, https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/05/03/russia-playing-geopolitical-game-in-latin-america-pub-76228.

131 Brian Fonseca, “Russian Deceptive Propaganda Growing Fast in Latin America,” Global Americans, Aug. 7, 2018, https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/08/russian-deceptive-propaganda-growing-fast-in-latin-america/.

132 Fonseca, “Russian Deceptive Propaganda.”

133 Marina Pasquali, “Level of Support for Democracy in Mexico from 2008 to 2018,” Statistica, April 29, 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/990671/mexico-democracy-support-rates/.

134 Alejandro García Magos, “Is AMLO Undermining Democracy in Mexico?” OpenDemocracy, May 13, 2021, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/democratic-backsliding-mexico-force-for-good-bad/.

135 Fonseca, “Russian Deceptive Propaganda.”

136 For more on the effect of social media in Latin America see also Will Worley, “Misinformation Is Shaping the Colombian Election,” Centre for International Government Innovation, June 13, 2018, https://www.cigionline.org/articles/misinformation-shaping-colombian-election/; and Noam Lupu, Mariana V. Ramírez Bustamante, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, “Social Media Disruption: Messaging Mistrust in Latin America,” Journal of Democracy 31, no. 3 (July 2020): 160–71, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/social-media-disruption-messaging-mistrust-in-latin-america/.

137 Fonseca, “Russian Deceptive Propaganda.”

138 Kendall-Taylor, Frantz, and Wright, “The Digital Dictators.”

139 Kendall-Taylor, Frantz, and Wright, “The Digital Dictators,” 105.

140 Lührmann, et al., Democracy Report 2020.

141 James Pomfret, et al., “Inside the Hong Kong Protesters’ Anarchic Campaign Against China,” Reuters, Aug. 16, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/hongkong-protests-protesters/.

142 “Forbidden Feeds: Government Controls on Social Media in China,” PEN America, March 13, 2018, https://pen.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PENAmerica_Forbidden-Feeds-3.13-3.pdf.

143 Kendall-Taylor, Frantz, and Wright, “The Digital Dictators,” 106–08.

144 Paige Leskin, “Here Are all the Major US Tech Companies Blocked Behind China’s ‘Great Firewall,’” Business Insider, Oct. 10, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/major-us-tech-companies-blocked-from-operating-in-china-2019-5.

145 Debora L. Spar, Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from Buccaneers to Bill Gates (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 381.

146  Simon Denyer, “China’s Scary Lesson to the World: Censoring the Internet Works,” Washington Post, May 23, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-scary-lesson-to-the-world-censoring-the-internet-works/2016/05/23/413afe78-fff3-11e5-8bb1-f124a43f84dc_story.html.

147 Tara Francis Cahn, “China’s ‘Great Firewall’ Is Taller than Ever Under ‘President-for-Life’ Xi Jinping,” Business Insider, March 24, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/china-great-firewall-censorship-under-xi-jinping-2018-3; and PEN America, “Forbidden Feeds.”

148 Cahn, “China’s ‘Great Firewall.’”

149 Lotus Ruan, Jeffrey Knockel, and Masashi Crete-Nishihata, “We (Can’t) Chat: ‘709 Crackdown’ Discussions Blocked on Weibo and WeChat,” Citizen Lab, April 13, 2017, https://citizenlab.ca/2017/04/we-cant-chat-709-crackdown-discussions-blocked-on-weibo-and-wechat/;  Eva Dou, “Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 8, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-for-a-text-chinas-censors-are-spying-on-mobile-chat-groups-1512665007; and “China’s Cyber Watchdog Orders Top Tech Platforms to Increase Self-Censorship,” Reuters, July 19, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-censorship/chinas-cyber-watchdog-orders-top-tech-platforms-to-increase-self-censorship-idUSKBN1A41CS.

150 PEN America, “Forbidden Feeds.”

151 Tom Miles, “Internet Giants Told: Accept Cyber Curbs to be Welcome in China,” Reuters, Dec. 18, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber/internet-giants-told-accept-cyber-curbs-to-be-welcome-in-china-idINKBN1EC1MQ.

152 Bryan Menegus, “Google Employees Demand Company Kill Censored Chinese Search Product,” Gizmodo, Nov. 27, 2018, https://gizmodo.com/google-employees-demand-company-kill-censored-chinese-s-1830673390; Ryan Gallagher, “Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal,” The Intercept, Aug. 1, 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/; and Ryan Gallagher, “How U.S. Tech Giants Are Helping to Build China’s Surveillance State,” The Intercept, July 11, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm-semptian/.

153 Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (New York: Public Affairs, 2017), 125.

154 Josh Halliday, “Hillary Clinton Adviser Compares Internet to Che Guevara,” The Guardian, June 22, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jun/22/hillary-clinton-adviser-alec-ross.

155 Soldatov and Borogan, The Red Web, 145.

156 Soldatov and Borogan, The Red Web, 163.

157 Polyakova and Meserole, “Exporting Digital Authoritarianism,” 9.

158 Michael Birnbaum, “Russia Threatens BuzzFeed with Ban in Escalated Campaign Against News Outlets,” Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-threatens-buzzfeed-with-ban-in-escalated-campaign-against-news-outlets/2014/12/06/731dd69e-bcc7-4a9a-a20b-3e511938ae24_story.html; and Andrew Roth and David M. Herszenhorn, “Facebook Page Goes Dark, Angering Russia Dissidents,” New York Times, Dec. 22, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/world/europe/facebook-angers-russian-opposition-by-blocking-protest-page.html.

159 Robert Morgus, “The Spread of Russia’s Digital Authoritarianism,” in Artificial Intelligence, China, Russia, and the Global Order: Technological, Political, Global, and Creative Perspectives, ed. Nicholas D. Wright, (Washington, DC: United States Department of Defense, 2018), 86.

160 Polyakova and Meserole, “Exporting Digital Authoritarianism,” 2.

161 Kendall-Taylor, Frantz, and Wright, “Digital Dictators,” 110–13; and Polyakova and Meserole, “Exporting Digital Authoritarianism,” 6.

162 Soldatov and Borogan, 216–17.

163 Alandete and Verdú, “How Russian Networks Worked to Boost the Far Right in Italy.”

164 Schneier, Data and Goliath, 63.

165 Laura Rosenberger, “Making Cyberspace Safe for Democracy: The New Landscape of Information Competition,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 3 (May/June 2020): 154, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-04-13/making-cyberspace-safe-democracy.

166 Hannah Jane Parkinson, “Click and Elect: How Fake News Helped Donald Trump Win a Real Election,” The Guardian, Nov. 14, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/14/fake-news-donald-trump-election-alt-right-social-media-tech-companies; and Craig Silverman and Jeremy Singer-Vine, “Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says,” BuzzFeed News, Dec. 6, 2016, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/fake-news-survey.

167 Katie Bo Williams, “Declassified Report: Putin Ordered Election Interference to Help Trump,” The Hill, Jan. 6, 2017, https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313108-declassified-report-putin-ordered-election-interference-to-help.

168 Scott Shane and Vindu Goel, “Fake Russian Facebook Accounts Bought $100,000 in Political Ads,” New York Times, Sept. 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russian-political-ads.html; and Adam Satariano, “Facebook Identifies Russia-Linked Misinformation Campaign,” New York Times, Jan. 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/business/facebook-misinformation-russia.html.

169 Donie O’Sullivan, “Russian Trolls Created Facebook Events Seen by More than 300,000 Users,” CNN, Jan. 26, 2018, https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/26/media/russia-trolls-facebook-events/index.html.

170 The Economist, “Threaten Democracy.”

171 Adam Payne, “Russia Used a Network of 150,000 Twitter Accounts to Meddle in Brexit,” Business Insider, Nov. 15, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-used-twitter-accounts-to-meddle-in-brexit-investigation-shows-2017-11; and Robert Booth, et al., “Russia Used Hundreds of Fake Accounts to Tweet About Brexit, Data Shows,” The Guardian, Nov. 14, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/14/how-400-russia-run-fake-accounts-posted-bogus-brexit-tweets.

172 David D. Kirkpatrick, “Signs of Russian Meddling in Brexit Referendum,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/world/europe/russia-brexit-twitter-facebook.html.

173 “UK Cyber Security Chief Blames Russia for Hacker Attacks,” Business Times, Nov. 16, 2017, https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/uk-cyber-security-chief-blames-russia-for-hacker-attacks.

174 Business Times, “Cyber Security Chief Blames Russia.”

175 James Doubek, “How Disinformation And Distortions on Social Media Affected Elections Worldwide,” NPR, Nov. 16, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/11/16/564542100/how-disinformation-and-distortions-on-social-media-affected-elections-worldwide.

176 Sheera Frenkel and Katie Benner, “To Stir Discord in 2016, Russians Turned Most Often to Facebook,” New York Times, Feb. 17, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/technology/indictment-russian-tech-facebook.html; “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 2: Russia’s Use of Social Media,” U.S. Senate, 116th Congress, 1st Session, 2019, https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf.

177 Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West (New York: Hachette books, 2018), 95–12; and Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018), 135–50. For the quote, see, “Conceptual Views on the Activity of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Information Space,” The Russian Ministry of Defense, 2011, available at the Pir Center, accessed June 24, 2021, http://www.pircenter.org/en/articles/532-conceptual-views-on-the-activity-of-the-armed-forces-of-the-russian-federation-in-information-space.

178 Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy, 95–120.

179 Rosenberger, “Cyberspace,” 148.

180 Kakutani, The Death of Truth, 151–64.

181 Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Santa Monica, CA: RAND corp., 2018), 1–6, https://doi.org/10.7249/RR2314.

182 Elias Groll, “Bipartisan Senate Report Undercuts Trump’s Account of 2016 Meddling,” Foreign Policy, Oct. 8, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/08/bipartisan-senate-report-undercuts-trumps-account-of-2016-meddling.

183 Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow, “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 211–36, https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211.

184 John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 1–11.

185 Alexandre Bovet and Hernán A., Makse, “Influence of Fake News in Twitter During the 2016 US Presidential Election,” Nature Communications, no. 10 (January 2019): 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07761-2; and Lucia Graves, “How Trump Weaponized ‘Fake News’ for His Own Political Ends,” Pacific Standard, Feb. 26, 2018, https://psmag.com/social-justice/how-trump-weaponized-fake-news-for-his-own-political-ends.

186 Matthew Flinders, “UK Election 2019: This Is What Populism Looks Like When Done by the British,” The Conversation, Nov. 12 , 2019, https://theconversation.com/uk-election-2019-this-is-what-populism-looks-like-when-done-by-the-british-126733.

187 J.J. Messner de Latour, et al., “Fragile States Index 2020.”

188 Nate Haken, “Democracies Under Pressure,” The Fund of Peace, May 10, 2020, https://fragilestatesindex.org/2020/05/10/democracies-under-pressure/.

189 Richard Wike and Shannon Schumacher, “Democratic Rights Popular Globally but Commitment to Them not Always Strong,” Pew Research Center, Feb. 27, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/27/democratic-rights-popular-globally-but-commitment-to-them-not-always-strong/.

190 Ekaterina Stepanova, “The Role of Information Communication Technologies in the ‘Arab Spring,’” PONARS, May 2011, http://pircenter.org/kosdata/page_doc/p2594_2.pdf.

191 Fadi Salem and Racha Mourtada, “Civil Movements: The Impact of Facebook and Twitter,” Arab Social Media Report 1, no. 2 (January 2011), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281748504_Civil_Movements_The_Impact_of_Facebook_and_Twitter/link/578cb44608ae7a588ef3b2d9/download.

192 Mohamed Ben Moussa, “From Arab Street to Social Movements: Re-theorizing Collective Action and the Role of Social Media in the Arab Spring,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 9, no. 2 (2013): 47–68, http://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.166.

193 “Individuals Using the Internet (% of population) – Brasil,” The World Bank, accessed June 24, 2021, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=BR; and Statista, “Level of Support for Democracy in Brazil from 2008 to 2018.”

194 Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Global Satisfaction with Democracy 2020.

195 Jamildo Melo, “Confiança Do Brasileiro Nas Instituições é a Mais Baixa Desde 2009,” Blog de Jamildo, https://m.blogs.ne10.uol.com.br/jamildo/2018/08/11/confianca-do-brasileiro-nas-instituicoes-e-a-mais-baixa-desde-2009/.

196 Eduardo Suárez, “You Can’t Blame Platforms Alone, but in a Country with the Right Conditions They Can Undermine Democracy and Public Debate,” Reuters Institute, June 4, 2021, https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/you-cant-blame-platforms-alone-country-right-conditions-they-can-undermine-democracy; Benjamin H. Bradlow, “Rightist Bolsonaro Takes Office in Brazil, Promising Populist Change to Angry Voters,” The Conversation, Dec. 21, 2018, https://theconversation.com/rightist-bolsonaro-takes-office-in-brazil-promising-populist-change-to-angry-voters-106303; and Zack Beauchamp, “Social Media Is Rotting Democracy from Within,” Vox, Jan. 22, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/22/18177076/social-media-facebook-far-right-authoritarian-populism.

197 Eduardo Suárez, “You Can’t Blame Platforms Alone.”

198 Haass, “How a World Order Ends,” 22–30.

199 Kornbluh, “The Internet’s Lost Promise,” 33–38.

200 Adam Segal, “When China Rules the Web: Technology in Service of the State,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 5 (September/October 2018): 10–18, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/when-china-rules-web.

201 Gordon Pennycook and David Rand, “The Right Way to Fight Fake News,” New York Times, March 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/opinion/fake-news-social-media.html; and Cecilia Kang and Mike Isaac, “Defiant Zuckerberg Says Facebook Won’t Police Political Speech,” New York Times, Oct. 21, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/business/zuckerberg-facebook-free-speech.html.

202 Zephyr Teachout, Break ’em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big AG, Big Tech, and Big Money (New York: All Points Books, 2020), 1–15; and Cecilia Kang,  “Lawmakers, Taking Aim at Big Tech, Push Sweeping Overhaul of Antitrust,” New York Times,  June 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/technology/big-tech-antitrust-bills.html.

203 K. Sabeel Rahman and Zephyr Teachout, “From Private Bads to Public Goods: Adapting Public Utility Regulation for Informational Infrastructure,” Knight First Amendment Institute, Feb. 4, 2020, https://knightcolumbia.org/content/from-private-bads-to-public-goods-adapting-public-utility-regulation-for-informational-infrastructure.

204 Rahman and Teachout, “From Private Bads to Public Goods.”

205 Nilay Patel, “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook.” The Verge, Sept. 4, 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/4/17816572/tim-wu-facebook-regulation-interview-curse-of-bigness-antitrust; Chelsea Barabas, Neha Narula, and Ethan Zuckerman, “Decentralized Social Networks Sound Great. Too Bad They’ll Never Work,” Wired, Sept. 8, 2017, https://www.wired.com/story/decentralized-social-networks-sound-great-too-bad-theyll-never-work/; and Ganesh Sitaraman, “Too Big to Prevail: The National Security Case for Breaking Up Big Tech,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 116–26. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-02-10/too-big-prevail.

206 Charlie Warzel, “Facebook Can’t Be Reformed,” New York Times, July 1, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/opinion/facebook-zuckerberg.html.

207 “Total Surveillance Is Not What America Signed Up For,” New York Times, Dec. 21, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/21/opinion/location-data-privacy-rights.html.

208 Larry Downes, “How More Regulation for US Tech Could Backfire,” Harvard Business Review, Feb. 9, 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/02/how-more-regulation-for-u-s-tech-could-backfire; and Adam Satariano, “Britain Proposes Broad New Powers to Regulate Internet Content,” New York Times, April 7, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/business/britain-internet-regulations.html.

209 Jessica Chen Weiss, “A World Safe for Autocracy? China’s Rise and the Future of Global Politics,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 4 (July/August 2019): 92–102, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-06-11/world-safe-autocracy.

210 Christophe Deloire, “To Stop Fake News, Online Journalism Needs a Global Watchdog,” Foreign Policy, Nov. 6, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/06/to-stop-fake-news-online-journalism-needs-a-global-watchdog.

211 “30 Countries Sign Up to ‘Information and Democracy’ Partnership Started by RSF,” Reporters Without Borders, Oct. 21, 2019, https://rsf.org/en/news/30-countries-sign-information-and-democracy-partnership-started-rsf.

212 Jacob Mchangama and Joelle Fiss, “Germany’s Online Crackdowns Inspire the World’s Dictators,” Foreign Policy, Nov. 6, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/06/germany-online-crackdowns-inspired-the-worlds-dictators-russia-venezuela-india/.

213 Richard A. Clarke and Rob Knake, “The Internet Freedom League: How to Push Back Against the Authoritarian Assault on the Web,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 5 (September/October 2019): 184–92, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-08-12/internet-freedom-league.