Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The technological advances has changed a lot – but is it in favor of the regimes or the oppositions?
The rise of smartphones has transformed the relationship between citizens and power, creating new opportunities for both resistance and repression.
For authoritarian regimes, the device in nearly every pocket has proven to be a double-edged sword: it can amplify dissent at unprecedented speed, but it can also serve as a powerful instrument of surveillance, control, and narrative management.
Whether smartphones have made suppression harder or easier depends less on the technology itself and more on how regimes adapt to it.
Collective action in our pockets
On the side of resistance, smartphones have undeniably lowered the barriers to collective action. They enable rapid communication, coordination, and documentation.
Protesters can organize flash demonstrations through encrypted messaging apps, share live updates on police movements, and mobilize international attention within minutes.
Images and videos recorded on smartphones have exposed abuses that would once have remained hidden, from police brutality to electoral fraud.
Some of the most recent examples of this is how the Iranian regime has shut down the internet due to the mass protests, but footage of alleged dead protesters and violent crackdowns has been smuggled out and is now circulating online.
According to a 2011 report by the International Press Institute, smartphones played an important role during the Arab Spring, shaping global awareness and sustaining domestic morale. The ability to bear witness has become a form of power in itself.
No more monopoly on the truth
Smartphones also weaken state monopolies over information. Even in heavily censored environments, citizens often find ways to access foreign news, circulate alternative narratives, or use humor and coded language to evade filters.
The sheer volume of user-generated content can overwhelm traditional censorship methods, forcing regimes into a reactive posture. In this sense, smartphones have made outright suppression more visible and politically costly, especially for governments that seek legitimacy on the global stage.
In several cases, videos shared by Russian citizens on social media have contradicted official accounts of events during the war in Ukraine.
A tool for mass surveillance
Yet authoritarian regimes have learned quickly. Far from being passive victims of technological change, many have integrated smartphones into sophisticated systems of control.
Over the years, surveillance capabilities have expanded dramatically. Smartphones generate vast amounts of data—location, contacts, messages, biometric identifiers—that can be harvested directly or indirectly.
Through mandatory apps, cooperation with telecom providers, or the exploitation of security vulnerabilities, states can track individuals in real time and map entire social networks. What once required informants and physical monitoring can now be automated and scaled.
Shutdowns, trolling and app stores
Control over the digital ecosystem has also become a central strategy. App stores, operating systems, and network infrastructure are chokepoints that states can regulate or weaponize.
Internet shutdowns, throttling, and platform bans are blunt but effective tools for disrupting mobilization at critical moments
More subtly, regimes deploy armies of online commentators, bots, and influencers to flood social media with propaganda, sow confusion, or discredit opposition figures.
In such environments, smartphones may spread information quickly, but not necessarily truth.
When fear becomes control
Psychological control has deepened as well. Constant connectivity allows regimes to reach citizens directly with alerts, patriotic content, or implicit warnings. The knowledge—or suspicion—that one’s phone may be monitored can foster self-censorship.
When repression is targeted and data-driven, rather than indiscriminate, it can be more efficient and less likely to provoke mass backlash. Smartphones, in this context, become tools not just of surveillance but of behavioral management.
The balance between empowerment and control is further shaped by inequality in digital literacy and access.
Tech-savvy activists may use encryption, burner phones, or offline coordination methods, but much of the population does not.
Authoritarian states often exploit this gap, allowing limited digital freedom while selectively punishing high-profile cases to deter broader dissent. The visibility provided by smartphones can thus become a liability for protesters, making identification and retaliation easier after demonstrations subside.
So, is there an answer to the question?
Ultimately, smartphones have not made suppression categorically harder or easier; they have made it more complex.
They accelerate the cycle of challenge and response, innovation and counter-innovation. In regimes that lack technical capacity or legitimacy, smartphones can tilt the balance toward popular mobilization.
In regimes that invest heavily in digital control and are willing to adapt, the same devices can entrench power more deeply than before.
For citizens, the smartphone remains a potent but risky tool. For authoritarian regimes, it is no longer an external threat to be blocked, but an internal system to be mastered.
The struggle over control, visibility, and truth now plays out not just in streets and institutions, but on the screens people carry with them every day.
Sources: Smartphones in the Arab Spring (2011), Yale Review of International Studies, The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, analysis of digital surveillance practices published on CambridgeAnalytica.org, BBC
