Digital repression was seen as a gradual process in this study. Nigar Hasanova from Media and Journalism Research Center, Tallinn, Estonia looked at two national contexts, Russia and Turkey, to analyse common patterns.
Digital journalism, and digital watchdog journalism has grown in popularity in the recent decades. In many countries, this has led to the temptation to transform the watchdogs into lapdogs, and although nearly every country has some constitutional protections for press freedoms, selective repression, while maintaining the illusion of free press, is still possible.
Relying on the typology of Levitsky and Way (2010), the author categorizes governance systems: democratic, authoritarian, and hybrid regimes. According to studies, hybrid and even democratic regimes can experience repression (Bjørnskov and Voig 2021; Nilsson and Örnebring 2016). The author characterizes Russia as a formerly hybrid regime that is now authoritarian, and Turkey formerly democratic that is now hybrid, based on the analysis.
In both countries, digital repression involved many components. In Russia, the legal foundation involved vague and broad laws such as the foreign agent law (2012, expanded 2017), 2013 “Blacklist law”, and the 2014 “Bloggers law”. Centralisation component, where the state restricted the internet, involved the Capture of Vkontakte (2014), Data localization law, and Sovereign internet law (2019), with the expansion of the foreign agent law also listed here.
The aspect of platform & content domination was about the government seeking control over platforms and content. Examples were Alexei Navalny’s Live journal and VKontakte bans (2014), and Bans after Ukraine invasion (of Facebook and Instagram) in 2022. Finally, Russia moved to greater digital repression and a national digital space with the landing law (2022) and VPN bans (2024).
The blueprint was similar, but the scale was slightly smaller and the examples differed. The legal foundation was based on criminalizing free speech and justifying censorship: Article 301/Insulting Turkishness (2014), Article 299/Insulting president (2015), and statutory decrees of 2016. In centralisation, Turkey sought control over content and data with laws: local storage requirements (post-coup), Social media law (2020), and temporary shutdowns of Twitter, Youtube etc. (2013, 2016, 2023, 2025).
Turkey also sought to dominate platforms and dominate content with state pressure and blocking platforms during crises. Examples are bandwidth throttling (2013, 2016, 2023, 2025). All in all, Russia had harsher repression than the hybrid regime of Turkey.
In conclusion, there were three main mechanisms for repression: legal suppression through ambiguous legislation, surveillance and infrastructure control, and platform and content blocking to block digital dissent. These were not triggered by a single crisis but a combination of stages, a processual blueprint. This study contributed to the discussion on media rights, journalism, freedom of speech, and the intersection of digital technology and political control.
The article “Processual blueprint of digital repression: Comparative analysis of Russia and Turkey” by Nigar Hasanova is in Journalism. (Free abstract).
Picture: Woman in black shirt wearing black sunglasses by engin akyurt.
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