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Despite the rapid rise of the Internet and social media, governments in China, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, Zimbabwe and elsewhere are finding ways to use state-controlled media to help themselves stay in power, Robert Orttung and Christopher Walker write in an article titled “Authoritarian regimes retool their media-control strategy” and published in Washington Post.

According to the article they achieve their goals through selective censorship of political expression and by using state media to influence crucial audiences.

“To muddy the waters in Azerbaijan, a pro-government youth group publishes Internet memes designed to discredit the opposition,” the authors note.

The note, that as with traditional media, restrictive online measures are not designed to block everything but are aimed chiefly at obstructing news about politics or other sensitive issues from consistently reaching key audiences.

“Aside from outliers such as Cuba, North Korea and Turkmenistan, most authoritarian regimes today do not seek total domination of all means of mass communication. Instead, they want “effective media control” — enough for them to convey their strength and puff up claims to legitimacy while undermining potential alternatives,” the article reads.

According to the article, state-dominated media work to make mass audiences respect and fear the regime, but breeding apathy and passivity is just as important. To stay in power, an authoritarian regime must keep vast numbers of people out of politics. State-controlled television is the main tool for achieving this objective in environments where typically three-quarters or more of the population get their information from TV.

“In authoritarian regimes, state-controlled media seek to isolate activists from society at large, with the idea of preventing them from organizing and mobilizing. To this end, state-run media try to discredit in the public’s mind any notion of a political alternative,” the authors note.