[Air-L] Special issue CFP: Authoritarianism in the Digital Age

[Kylie Jarrett]

Dialogues on Digital Society

Special Issue: Authoritarianism in the Digital Age

Proposal deadline: May 16, 2025

Submission deadline: July 1, 2025

Max length: 2,000 words, including references.


Events in the U.S. since the 2024 presidential election have brought into
stark relief that digital technologies, industries, and systems are central
to the growing intensity of reactionary and conservative politics and the
expanding influence and activities of authoritarian movements across the
world. While these political agendas and related governance systems have a
long and wide-spread history, their increased presence is fraying the
global economic, social, and political order in place since post-WWII
accords. What the role of the digital is, has been, or could be, in this
emerging geopolitical landscape is the theme of this special issue of Dialogues
on Digital Society.

Digital technologies are implicated in contemporary authoritarian politics
in a variety of ways. Social media platforms and AI-powered bots have long
been recognised for enabling the creation, distribution, and amplification
of reactionary political views. Remotely controlled drones drop bombs on
civilians, relying on satellite technologies owned by digital media
oligarchs with close ties to authoritarian leaders. Governments seek
control over the digital information landscape, demanding deletion of
“unauthorised content” from websites and libraries, while governmental
communication is at times routed through unofficial platforms, potentially
avoiding scrutiny, recording, and/or archiving. States draw on granular
surveillance data from bespoke or compliant apps and platforms to police
their populations, often in the guise of public safety measures. Digital
infrastructures such as satellites or undersea cables become political
weapons, used to force compliance by nations reliant on their capabilities,
or remain under threat of disruption by rogue political actors.

At the same time, digital technologies are vital tools for the organising
of resistance against authoritarian incursions into social and economic
liberties. News updates and information about personal and collective
safety are shared through encrypted digital systems. Acts of genocide are
livestreamed. Protests, street demonstrations, and direct interventions
against authoritarian acts are instigated and promoted through digital
platforms, while culture jamming online protests seek to block up digitally
mediated governance systems. Archivists, librarians, and ordinary citizens
mobilise to preserve digital records. Solidarity messages created and
shared online sustain individuals as they navigate an increasingly perilous
sociopolitical landscape.

We welcome short commentary articles (1,500-2,000 words) that report on,
reflect on, critique, and illuminate our picture of the role of digital
technologies in building, sustaining, and challenging authoritarian rule.
We especially welcome papers that place this role in the longer histories
of these political systems and those that explore these dynamics as they
are occurring within a variety of jurisdictions. We are particularly keen
to include analysis from across the global geopolitical landscape and not
just the present U.S. moment - that is, an analysis of digitally-mediated
authoritarianism in Asia, Africa, South and Central America, North America,
and Europe.

Topics may include – but are not limited to:

Digital infrastructures of authoritarian rule

Digital warfare in support of authoritarian states

The role of digital media industries and owners in authoritarian states

Digital tools and organization of resistance

Digital information and democracy

AI and smart technologies as authoritarian infrastructure

Cultures of online resistance

Digital surveillance tools and their applications

Smart city systems in authoritarian contexts


Send a proposed title and abstract (150-250 words) by May 16, 2025 to
kylie.jarrett1 at ucd.ie. Submission of completed commentaries will be by July
1, 2025. All submissions will be subject to review. Also, feel free to get
in touch if you have concerns about the risks associated with such a
publication but still wish to contribute (we are prepared to facilitate
anonymous publication).


_________________
Prof. Kylie Jarrett
School of Information and Communication Studies
University College Dublin
She/her


Editor-in-chief: *Dialogues on Digital Society*

Author: *Digital Labor *(Polity 2022)*;*
*Feminism, Labour, and D**igital Media: The Digital Housewife *(Routledge
2016)
Co-author*: NSFW: Sex, Humor and Risk in Social Media *(MIT Press 2019)
*Google and the Culture of Search *(Routledge 2013)