Files
Abstract
How has the innovation, diffusion, and adoption of technology impacted human rights? Previous literature has extensively explored the mechanisms through which state leaders and their agents decide to engage in human rights abuses but more need to be understood when considering technology’s role. This project addresses these topics along three dimensions. Chapter 2 assesses the relationship between digital repression, particularly digital disruptions, and transnational advocacy shaming efforts that target violating states’ human rights practices. The third chapter explores how state leaders and their agents select from seemingly competing strategies of digital repressions repression tactics. Finally, the fourth chapter evaluates how legitimation strategies of leaders impact digital rights violations. The primary goal of this project is to develop a deeper understanding of mechanisms that lead to governments using repertoires of digital repression to dampen the effects of transnational advocacy as well as domestic advocacy, how governments can use digital repression to violate civil rights in less overtly violent ways, and how legitimacy factors into state policies of using digital repression.