Bardia Rahmani

Bardia Rahmani is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. His research focuses on media and public opinion in autocracies and backsliding democracies.

April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2

How Autocrats Use Proxies to Control the Media

Propaganda is autocrats’ weapon of first resort, allowing them to rely on persuasion rather than violence to achieve their ends. But citizens have grown savvy, so autocrats are taking a new tack: spreading their messages via private news outlets indirectly controlled by regime proxies.