Messaging Apps: A Rising Tool for Informational Autocrats

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231190932
• Author: Inga K. Trauthig,Zelly C. Martin,Samuel C. Woolley
• Date: 01 March 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(1) 17–29

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10659129231190932

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Messaging Apps: A Rising Tool for

Informational Autocrats

Inga K. Trauthig

1

, Zelly C. Martin

1

, and Samuel C. Woolley

1

Abstract

Social media have caused adaptations to existing conceptualizations of democratization , democratic backsliding, and

authoritarian hardening. One attempt to capture how social media may solidify authoritarian tendencies while main-

taining the government’s popularity is the concept of informational autocracies: rule primarily through the manipulation

of information. In this paper, we contribute to Guriev and Treisman’s conceptualizations, who coined the term “in-

formational autocrats”and relied on case studies from around the world. Overall, we expand on existing literature on

social media and informational autocracies via a discussion of encrypted messaging apps (e.g., WhatsApp or Telegram) in

such contexts. Using a qualitative comparative approach consisting of 68 interviews across 11 country case studies, our

analyses demonstrate that the relative secrecy offered by encryption messaging apps can benef‌it state propagandists and

authoritarian tendencies.

Keywords

comparative politics, information technology, media and communications, qualitative methods

Introduction

Systemic transformations moving countries from one type

of political system to another are not typically abrupt or

linear. Instead, systemic changes tend to build incre-

mentally and face regular backsliding. Given this f‌luidity,

scholars have been concerned with the relevance of the

various factors that contribute to systemic political change

for decades. With the advent of civic and state engagement

on social media—potentially fostering both democratic

participation and authoritarian suppression—social media

are often examined for their effects (or lack thereof) on

political transitions (Sunstein 2017;Tucker et al. 2017;

Vaccari and Valeriani 2015;Vanderhill 2013). In Farrel’s

(2012) outline of the “Consequences of the Internet for

Politics,”he draws on burgeoning research linking the

internet to political developments. Since then, however,

both international use of social media and understandings

of its effects upon politics have markedly advanced

(Duffy et al. 2011;Howard 2010;Tucker et al. 2017;

Wolfsfeld, Segev, and Sheafer 2013).

Outstanding questions about whether social media are

communication tools that contribute to democratization

(i.e., “liberation technology”) or facilitate authoritarian

solidif‌ication via suppression (Bermeo 2016;Christensen

2011;Diamond 2010, 70) have continued to increase in

relevance. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated a

trend of recent democratic backsliding while user num-

bers of messaging apps show a continuous upward trend

(Repucci and Slipowitz 2020;Statista 2022b). Scholars

are divided in their assessments but one factor unites most

of them—their focus on “open”social media platforms,

such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (Kyriakopoulou

2011). This article argues that encrypted messaging apps

(EMAs), such as Signal, Telegram, Viber, or WhatsApp

are crucial but often underestimated.

We de f‌ine encrypted messaging apps as those that offer

encryption with end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) available,

that is, communication which is only visible to the sender

and receiver of a message. According to Statista, mes-

saging apps overtook social networking apps as the most

popular app category by worldwide reach in 2020 (Statista

2022a;2022c). But while such statistics are signif‌icant,

they do not tell us why users rely on these apps or what

1

Center for Media Engagement & School of Journalism and Media, The

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Inga K. Trauthig, The University of Texas at Austin, Dean Keeton St,

Austin, TX 78712-1139, USA.

Email: inga.trauthig@austin.utexas.edu