Subtle Censorship via Adversarial Fakeness in Kyrgyzstan

With the shift of public discourse to social media, we see simultaneously an expansion of civic engagement as the bar to enter the conversation is lowered, and the reaction by both state and non-state adversaries of free speech to silence these voices. Traditional forms of censorship struggle in this new situation to enforce the preferred narrative of those in power. Consequently, they have developed new methods for controlling the conversation that use the social media platform itself. Using the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan as a main case study, this talk explores how this new form of "subtle" censorship relies on pretence and imitation, and why interdisciplinary methods of research are needed to grapple with it. We examine how "fakeness" in the form of fake news and profiles is used as methods of subtle censorship.