Information Policy of Authoritarian Regimes in Contemporary Academic Discourse: Literature Review (A Review of Current Research)

Abstract

The information environment of the 21st century has become a primary battleground for authoritarian regimes seeking to consolidate power domestically and project influence internationally. Classical models of autocratic rule have given way to sophisticated, information-centred governance strategies that exploit digital technologies, algorithmic platforms, and cognitive vulnerabilities in open societies. The convergence of Russian and Chinese approaches to information manipulation, combined with the coordinated export of these practices to third countries, represents a qualitatively new challenge for liberal democracies, particularly in Europe and the post-Soviet space. Despite a growing body of scholarship on disinformation, propaganda, and digital authoritarianism, a systematic synthesis of the theoretical frameworks that explain this transformation remains underrepresented in Ukrainian academic discourse.

This article aims to conduct a structured review of contemporary international scholarship on the information policies of modern authoritarian regimes, to identify the key conceptual frameworks that describe their information strategies, and to assess their implications for democratic resilience – with particular relevance to Ukraine's security context.

Methods. The study employs theoretical-conceptual analysis and a systematic literature review of scholarship on the transformation of authoritarianism in the digital age, informational autocracies, and digital authoritarianism. A comparative approach is applied to interpret Russian and Chinese practices of information control. Elements of discourse analysis are used to reconstruct the key narratives and ideological frameworks that accompany democratic backsliding and the export of authoritarian information strategies. The corpus of sources includes peer-reviewed academic articles, policy papers, and monographs from leading Western, Ukrainian, and international research institutions published primarily between 2014 and 2025.

The review identifies four interconnected conceptual clusters. First, the transition from classical repressive dictatorships to "spin dictatorships" and "informational autocracies" (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Krekó 2025; Rosenfeld and Wallace 2024) reveals that contemporary authoritarian regimes no longer rely primarily on violence but on the sophisticated restructuring of information environments to construct an illusion of legitimacy. Second, the concept of "authoritarian informationalism" (Garbe and Merz 2025) captures how digital technologies have enabled a dual transformation: empowering surveillance, targeted censorship, and preemptive neutralisation of dissent, while simultaneously creating new systemic vulnerabilities for regimes dependent on transnational platforms. Third, the convergence of Russian and Chinese disinformation strategies (Swanström and Månsson 2025; Sahgal and Shukla 2022; Hamilton and Ohlberg 2020) demonstrates how two structurally distinct actors are increasingly aligned in promoting anti-Western narratives, exporting digital control technologies, and building parallel global information architectures through state media, bot networks, and coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Fourth, the structural vulnerabilities of democracies – rooted in their openness, normative constraints on state intervention, and eroded institutional trust – are systematically exploited by authoritarian actors as asymmetric advantages, particularly through foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) operations.

Conclusions. Modern authoritarian regimes share a set of defining characteristics in the information domain: systematic use of disinformation and propaganda as substitutes for overt coercion; centralised control over information infrastructure; the fusion of online and offline surveillance; and the deliberate blurring of the boundary between truth and falsehood to generate cognitive paralysis rather than persuasion. Domestically tested mechanisms – "firehose of falsehood," cognitive warfare, bot-network amplification – are systematically projected outward, transforming informational autocracy from a domestic governance style into an exported instrument of geopolitical competition. For Ukraine, these findings carry direct security implications: Russia's full-scale military aggression is accompanied by a long-term information war targeting internal cohesion, institutional legitimacy, and international standing. Effective countermeasures require an integrated strategy combining strategic communications capacity, institutional fact-checking infrastructure, media literacy education, and sustained diplomatic engagement with partner states to maintain the sanctions and support framework that constrains Russian operational capability.