Françoise Daucé, Benjamin Loveluck & Francesca Musiani (eds.), Digital Authoritarianism in the Making. Repression and Resistance on the Russian Internet, The MIT Press, 2025
Available in open access.
This is the revised and updated translation of the book Genèse d’un autoritarisme numérique (Presses des Mines, 2023), published in French. It explores the Russian model of digital sovereignty, through the policies regulating the Russian internet and its infrastructural transformations, resituating them within their historical context starting in the early 2010s and ending with the launch of the full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022. It offers a political sociology of the Russian digital space, including the variety of actors who have sought to occupy it: access providers, developers, journalists, activists, web professionals, and mobilized citizens.
While the Russian internet’s shift toward authoritarianism followed a specific trajectory, this model is expanding to all the regions where Moscow is extending its influence. Given current trends, it also carries important lessons about digital governance and control throughout the world.