Governance through a crisis: media regulation in nondemocratic systems

The chapter offers a framework for the analysis of media regulation in nondemocratic systems. It considers media and internet regulation as a form of autocratic adaptability in the context of continuous technological innovation. Regulation seeks to protect the legitimacy of autocratic leaders and their regimes in a rapidly changing environment. Accordingly, the regulation should be seen in the context of the trajectory of the development of media systems, either from closed to open or from open to closed. In the latter case, the transformation requires a multilayer mode of regulation that relies both on repressive power and on innovation. The chapter analyses the media and internet in Russia to illustrate how different forms of regulation transform an open system into a closed one. The chapter proposes to consider regulation as a form of crisis-led governance that uses crisis situations as opportunities to transform an open system into a closed one.