Knowing Is Disturbing: Emotions and Public Attitudes toward Digital Control under Autocracy

Digital technologies have transformed the way governments around the world maintain social and political order. However, the intrusive and often repressive nature of modern political control mechanisms, such as digital surveillance and digital censorship, is largely concealed from the public and becomes “normalized” by state propaganda, particularly in authoritarian regimes. Engaging with the political psychology literature on emotion, we examine how citizens respond emotionally to such control when exposed to relevant revealing information and how these emotions relate to shifts in attitudes toward authoritarian governments. Using a survey experiment and 50 in-depth interviews conducted in China, we find that exposure to revealing information about digital control slightly amplifies negative emotions but profoundly reduces positive emotions and significantly undermines public support for authoritarian digital governance. These effects are more pronounced in the context of digital surveillance than censorship and are most severe when individuals perceive control measures as personally targeted. Our findings underscore the political-psychological consequences of digital control, emphasizing the role of emotions in shaping public responses to digital authoritarianism based on new insights into the affective dimensions of digital repression.