As Sudan’s popular revolt surged from late 2018, threatening to topple President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s government, he received a memo urging the government to run a social media campaign… Read more »
With autocrats and illiberal forces resurgent, democracy is in danger worldwide, according to Stanford University’s Larry Diamond. Yet the world is at a “fluid moment” in which trends “could swing… Read more »
China’s authoritarian surveillance state crushed Covid-19 when it first appeared in Wuhan in early 2020 and trumpeted that success to the world. Now, more than two years later, the Omicron variant… Read more »
Ukraine is not the only place where the contest between autocracy and democracy is taking place. It is also happening within several European democracies, through elections rather than military conflict…. Read more »
The mobilization of a pro-democracy coalition of trade unions – the Sudanese Professionals Association – raised the profile of student and opposition activists through a public call to spread the… Read more »
The authoritarian challenge to democracy and human rights is arguably the defining geopolitical story of our time. But rather than oppose this trend, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) seems to… Read more »
China today used the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics to present an image of a global power whose authoritarian style of government can go head-to-head with a world dominated… Read more »
Beijing would try “like Germany in 1936” to “use the spectacle” of the upcoming Olympic Games “to win a propaganda victory for its system of strict controls,” according to philanthropist… Read more »
We have been looking for the solution to disinformation in the wrong place, according to a leading analyst. Civil society, not governments or social media companies, can best diminish disinformation…. Read more »
Citizens of authoritarian regimes trust their major institutions more than citizens of democracies trust theirs, a global survey has found. Public trust in governments running the world’s democracies has fallen… Read more »