Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction: New Authoritarian Practices in the MENA Region: Key Developments and Trends
- 2 Maintaining Order in Algeria: Upgrading Repressive Practices under a Hybrid Regime
- 3 The Authoritarian Topography of the Bahraini State: Political Geographies of Power and Protest
- 4 Authoritarian Repression Under Sisi: New Tactics or New Tools?
- 5 Deep Society and New Authoritarian Social Control in Iran after the Green Movement
- 6 Silencing Peaceful Voices: Practices of Control and Repression in Post-2003 Iraq
- 7 Israel/Palestine: Authoritarian Practices in the Context of a Dual State Crisis
- 8 Jordan: A Perpetually Liberalising Autocracy
- 9 Libya: Authoritarianism in a Fractured State
- 10 ‘The Freedom of No Speech’: Journalists and the Multiple Layers of Authoritarian Practices in Morocco
- 11 New Authoritarian Practices in Qatar: Censorship by the State and the Self
- 12 Digital Repression for Authoritarian Evolution in Saudi Arabia
- 13 The Evolution of the Sudanese Authoritarian State: The December Uprising and the Unravelling of a ‘Persistent’ Autocracy
- 14 Authoritarian Nostalgia and Practices in Newly Democratising Contexts: The Localised Example of Tunisia
- 15 An Assemblage of New Authoritarian Practices in Turkey
- 16 The United Arab Emirates: Evolving Authoritarian Tools
- 17 Authoritarian Practice and Fragmented Sovereignty in Post-uprising Yemen
- Index
12 - Digital Repression for Authoritarian Evolution inSaudi Arabia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction: New Authoritarian Practices in the MENA Region: Key Developments and Trends
- 2 Maintaining Order in Algeria: Upgrading Repressive Practices under a Hybrid Regime
- 3 The Authoritarian Topography of the Bahraini State: Political Geographies of Power and Protest
- 4 Authoritarian Repression Under Sisi: New Tactics or New Tools?
- 5 Deep Society and New Authoritarian Social Control in Iran after the Green Movement
- 6 Silencing Peaceful Voices: Practices of Control and Repression in Post-2003 Iraq
- 7 Israel/Palestine: Authoritarian Practices in the Context of a Dual State Crisis
- 8 Jordan: A Perpetually Liberalising Autocracy
- 9 Libya: Authoritarianism in a Fractured State
- 10 ‘The Freedom of No Speech’: Journalists and the Multiple Layers of Authoritarian Practices in Morocco
- 11 New Authoritarian Practices in Qatar: Censorship by the State and the Self
- 12 Digital Repression for Authoritarian Evolution in Saudi Arabia
- 13 The Evolution of the Sudanese Authoritarian State: The December Uprising and the Unravelling of a ‘Persistent’ Autocracy
- 14 Authoritarian Nostalgia and Practices in Newly Democratising Contexts: The Localised Example of Tunisia
- 15 An Assemblage of New Authoritarian Practices in Turkey
- 16 The United Arab Emirates: Evolving Authoritarian Tools
- 17 Authoritarian Practice and Fragmented Sovereignty in Post-uprising Yemen
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In February 2013, the Saudi Minister of Culture andInformation Abdulaziz Khoja admitted to the Saudidaily Al Watan thatthe authorities were struggling to cope with theKingdom's surging use of Twitter (Albawaba 2013). The platformwas booming, growing by up to 600 per cent per yearaccording to some reports and challenging theauthorities’ ability to censor and block content(GSN 2012a). Like those who hailed the liberatingpotential of social media during the 2011 Arabuprisings, some labelled Twitter as a new Saudiparliament: a watershed moment in atightly-controlled political system centred on theruling Al Saud family (Worth 2012).
In the years that followed, however, the world watchedas the Kingdom turned the tides on this trend,transforming Saudi Twitter into a platform populatedby pro-regime influencers and automated ‘bots’creating the illusion of popular regime support. Therise to de facto power of Crown Prince Mohammed binSalman (MbS) has tightened authoritarian rule andsparked scandals on a global level – not least thehigh-profile murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi.Mass arrests have targeted princes, intellectuals,clerics, merchants and activists amidunprecedentedly pervasive surveillance, asauthorities search for current or potentialdissenters who may challenge MbS's hold on power(GSN 2021a). Saudi Arabia may have been anauthoritarian state since its inception in 1932, butthere are new dynamics at play in this personalisedcentralisation of power under MbS, as well as in therepressive practices used to maintain it.
What accounts for this rapid evolution of authoritarianrule in Saudi Arabia? The chapter aims to show thatmounting repression and digital surveillance arebound up with MbS's attempts to transform theKingdom into a global technology hub. As the regimeconducts tactical social and economic liberalisationto rebrand the Kingdom and draw in internationalinvestment, it perceives internal threats: fromimmediate political opponents (includingconservatives, liberals and sidelined royal familyelements) to the more long-term evolution of thatliberalisation into political demands from thepopulace. In response, MbS is transforming SaudiArabia into a new kind of authoritarian state inwhich conformity and loyalty to his vision isexpected, enforced and engineered through theabundance of data on citizens derived from highlevels of communication technology use.
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- New Authoritarian Practices in the Middle East and North Africa , pp. 228 - 251Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022