Technology, Data, and the Authoritarian State

Catalog description

The course explores how modern authoritarian regimes use and shape information as a means to power, and how post-authoritarian societies reckon with that information’s legacies. Drawing on global examples (predominantly Europe, Russia and the Soviet Union, and China and elsewhere in Asia) from the 19th to the 21st centuries, topics include information technologies (from filing systems to AI) and their application; mapping, census, and population control; policing and surveillance; historical revisionism; censorship and control of expression; and forms of resistance and dissent. We will also explore the process of transitional justice, including the opening and preservation of records; grassroots and official fact-finding; story telling; judicial reckonings; and ethical questions about who owns and is owed information.