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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The intent of social media is to allow one to build a virtual world to augment one’s reality,
through the construction of connections without borders. In building such a world, one can lose
themselves in the limitless possibilities of community, and not realize that their digital habits
are being tracked for the purposes of adapting sociopolitical messaging to achieve premeditated
ends. Currently, both liberal democracies and autocracies are guilty are utilizing of
algorithms, psychological profiling, and propaganda inundation tactics, to influence political
actions in their citizens, albeit with differing scopes and intents. This work seeks to answer the
question of how such regimes differ in their scope and methodologies in doing so, and what
outcomes they hope to achieve. In order to do so, I will: analyze what encompasses modern
liberal democracies and autocracies by definition; provide an operational framework for
political manipulation and political misinformation, juxtaposed by traditional propaganda
inundation tactics; elaborate upon how totalitarian regimes and liberal democracies have
rallied around telecommunications technologies for political ends in times of conflict, and
contrast these realities with the advent of social media in achieving strategic political decisions
today. As a result, I wish to highlight that regimes worldwide are not acting sufficiently to
protect the privacy of their citizens or the integrity of the digital commons, and as a result,
there is little variance in the level of intrusion seen between political manipulators via social
media, in liberal democracies and autocracies.