Democratizing kompromat: the affordances of social media for state-sponsored harassment

Abstract

This study examines how a traditional tool of authoritarian social control – harassment of the opposition – has evolved with the need for more subtle harassment in the twenty-first-century transnational activism and social media era. Social media affords cheap and easy opportunities for authoritarian regimes, in this case, Azerbaijan, to subtly harass opposition to a large domestic audience, while eschewing direct attribution of the harassment. In this way, despite the challenges that information and communication technologies present authoritarian regimes, they also provide opportunities to increase control.

Keywords:

• Azerbaijan
• harassment
• opposition
• Internet
• meme
• cyberbullying
• authoritarian

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the peer reviewers and journal editor for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. The author would also like to thank the many Azerbaijanis that have bravely shared their experiences with harassment with the author as well as those that must live with this surveillance and harassment. I hope that I was able to tell your stories respectfully and compassionately.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Katy E. Pearce is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and holds an affiliation with the Ellison Center for Russian East European, and Central Asian Studies. Her research focuses on social and political uses of technologies and digital content in the transitioning democracies and semi-authoritarian states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia. [email: [email protected]]

ORCID

Katy E. Pearce http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3837-5305

Notes

1. http://articles.latimes.com/1989-06-13/news/mn-2300_1_soviets-arms-control-iron-curtain.

2. http://time.com/3640269/cuba-internet-washington-policy/.

3. http://azertag.az/node/1245917.

4. https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BAKU722_a.html.

5. https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07BAKU66_a.html.

6. The former president (the current president's father) was head of the Azerbaijani SSR KGB from 1967 to 1969, holding the rank of General after 22 years in the agency, and then was a member of the Soviet Politburo from 1982 to 1987.

7. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/swedish-telcom-giant-teliasonera-caught-helping-authoritarian-regimes-spy-its.

8. https://citizenlab.org/2014/02/mapping-hacking-teams-untraceable-spyware.

9. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fail.

10. http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-internet-defamation-law-criminal-aliyev/25008799.html.

11. http://www.mediarights.az/index.php?lngs=eng&id=79 and http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-ebrd-libel-law/25082305.html.

12. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/07/intimate-video-emerges-again-of-reporter-investigating-azerbaijan-presidents-family/.

13. http://contact.az/docs/2014/Politics/073000085515en.htm#.U9nOHmPCcZk; https://www.facebook.com/khadija.ismayil/postnuris/10201495339903952; http://www.bbc.co.uk/azeri/azerbaijan/2014/07/140730_kemale_benenyarli_video.shtml.

14. http://www.rferl.org/content/us-citizen-barred-from-leaving-azerbaijan-nuri-sex-video/26577791.html.

15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_oral_sex.

16. It should be noted that authoritarian regime change does not always lead to democracy, and in fact most do not transition temporarily or permanently to democratic rule (Carothers, 2002).