Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence

Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence, by Anita R. Gohdes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 200 pp., cloth $115, paperback $28.99, eBook $19.99.

In Repression in the Digital Age, Anita R. Gohdes explores how digital technologies are harnessed to reshape state repression. By synthesizing empirical analysis and theoretical insights, she demonstrates that online controls—such as censorship and surveillance—have become indispensable coercive tools of the modern state. Gohdes grapples with a central modern anxiety: the very tools meant to “democratize” information are increasingly co-opted by states to surveil, censor, and coerce their citizens (p. 6). By challenging the ethical dilemmas at the intersection of digital technology and governance, Gohdes has produced a work of significance for scholars in political science, philosophy, and digital ethics. Yet, the book’s philosophical implications, particularly regarding the ethics of digital control and Internet blackout, invite further analysis.

The central thesis from Gohdes is that cyber controls have revolutionized state repression by offering states more efficient, scalable, and responsive methods of managing dissent. One crucial point is how state surveillance has increasingly encroached upon areas traditionally regarded as private. Platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, or even private emails—once believed to be secure—can now be subject to states’ sophisticated monitoring tools. In many contexts, they are often actively surveilled, though the degree of penetration varies across regimes. This intrusion undermines the public-private distinction often seen as essential to individual freedom and moral agency.

Gohdes distinguishes “censorship,” which is the suppression of information, from “surveillance,” which involves the gathering of intelligence to facilitate targeted repression. Censorship is enacted through blocking websites, removing content, or shutting down entire networks, while surveillance entails the active gathering of intelligence through digital tools to monitor, track, and counter political threats. Although not mutually exclusive, they serve complementary functions in a regime’s coercive arsenal and represent profound shifts in how states conceptualize and execute power.

Repression in the Digital Age describes how censorship, especially blunt measures like Internet shutdowns, correlates with indiscriminate state violence, whereas surveillance enables targeted repression. Examining both authoritarian and democratic regimes, Gohdes highlights how these strategies are used to suppress dissent, consolidate power, and maintain social control. Her claim that “online surveillance requires a certain level of Internet access so that individuals can exchange their ideas and plans online” (p. 6) highlights the ironic relationship between connectivity and control: The infrastructure of empowerment doubles as a mechanism of subjugation. By halting digital connectivity, states disrupt not only communication but also the very infrastructure of collective action and accountability.

Gohdes highlights the paradox that the Internet, once celebrated as liberatory, has become a tool of authoritarianism. These complexities come into sharp focus throughout the book. She notes, for example, that “the analysis of network outages and daily conflict fatalities in Syria suggest that the government implemented large-scale disruptions selectively and purposely in conjunction with repressive offensives against the opposition” (p. 16). This reflects the tactical sophistication of modern repression, wherein governments exploit digital connectivity to gather information on dissent, while reserving the option to shut down connectivity altogether. The 2019 Internet blackout in Iran during nationwide protests over fuel prices likewise exemplifies how digital tools are used to disarm civil society. Protesters, deprived of secure communication, had to rely on state-controlled apps such as Soroush, Bale Messenger, Eitaa, and Rubika—platforms lacking end-to-end encryption and facilitating surveillance. Their deployment during the blackout restructured the digital public sphere into a mechanism of coercion and epistemic control.

Gohdes’s empirical contributions come to life in her detailed case studies of Syria and Iran, countries for which she meticulously analyzes the interplay between digital repression and traditional forms of violence. In Syria, the Assad regime employed Internet shutdowns as part of a broader strategy of repression during the civil conflict in 2011. According to Gohdes, these shutdowns effectively shielded atrocities from domestic and international scrutiny. She suggests that Internet blackouts in conflict zones often coincide with spikes in indiscriminate state violence. However, it remains an open question whether these shutdowns actively enable violence or are, instead, a reaction to tensions that are already escalating. For instance, in Syria, the shutdowns may have been preemptive measures aimed at countering anticipated uprisings rather than direct triggers of violence. Or, in Iran, violence in some areas reportedly escalated before the nationwide shutdown was fully implemented. While Gohdes concludes in chapter 9 that “access to infrastructure control, powerful spying tools, and increasingly expansive online propaganda ecosystems is helping governments manage their masses more effectively, both preemptively and reactively” (p. 145), further case-based exploration of this point would have been valuable. Her claims could have been expanded by engagement with additional contexts, such as India’s use of Internet shutdowns in Kashmir, or Ethiopia’s recurring restrictions during periods of unrest, which would illustrate the global scope of these dynamics and highlight differences in democratic vs. authoritarian applications of digital repression.

Gohdes presents Iran’s 2019 Internet blackout as a typical authoritarian strategy aimed at silencing dissent during moments of crisis. While this framing is true, it risks flattening the specificities of Iran’s political and social dynamics. The book appropriately demonstrates how protestors were forced to rely on government-controlled apps, leaving them vulnerable to surveillance. However, the analysis overlooks complexities of Iran’s power structures, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’s autonomous control over key telecommunications infrastructure, complicating straightforward explanations of the motives behind shutdowns.

The book could have offered a more insightful analysis by addressing what FilterWatch, a research platform that monitors digital censorship and internet governance in Iran, labels the “tiered internet system.” This system represents a form of social, class-based Internet access, evident in Iran’s protests, where elite and state institutions retained access while the general population faced disconnection. Additional attention to the broader drivers of repression, such as fear of unrest amid sanctions and public dissatisfaction, could have also offered a more strategic view of the blackout as a multifaceted tool of governance rather than a simple emergency measure.

The Iranian shutdown’s disproportionate impact on women, ethnic minorities, and younger generations—groups for whom online activism is pivotal—further highlights the asymmetry of harm caused by digital repression. In contrast to Syria’s civil war setting, Iran’s blackout occurred in a relatively stable environment, revealing new dimensions of how international observers interpret and respond to state-imposed connectivity disruptions, a nuance the book could have explored further.

Nonetheless, the case studies on Syria and Iran substantiate Gohdes’s theoretical claims. Her use of supervised machine learning, training a hand-coded dataset and then applying the XGBoost algorithm to classify over sixty-five thousand killings as “targeted” or “indiscriminate” (pp. 102–106), adds methodological credibility to her claims, enabling systematic and replicable analysis beyond anecdotal accounts. The global comparative analysis in chapter 8 further demonstrates that digital repression is prevalent beyond authoritarian regimes.

Indeed, the book raises broader questions about democratic institutions adopting similar tactics under the guise of security. Gohdes highlights that even democratic states have adopted tactics for digital control similar to authoritarian regimes, such as censorship, manipulation, and surveillance of their domestic cyberspace (p. 8). This convergence between authoritarian and democratic practices challenges the assumption that democratic institutions inherently safeguard against repression. Investigating the normative tensions between these practices and the foundational principles of liberal democracy could be an important contribution to political philosophy.

In conclusion, Repression in the Digital Age illuminates the evolving relationship between technology and state violence. Through detailed case studies and global analysis, Gohdes shows that digital repression transcends political regimes, posing urgent challenges for human rights and democratic governance. Her work compels scholars, policymakers, and activists to confront the darker potentials of digital infrastructure and rethink how freedom and control intersect in the twenty-first century. It is essential reading for anyone interested in uncovering the darker sides of digital technologies and the repercussions for democracy and human rights.

—Hossein Dabbagh

Hossein Dabbagh is an assistant professor of philosophy at Northeastern University London and an affiliated member of the Oxford Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford.