Kris Ruijgrok: Scholar of Digital Resistance

Kris Ruijgrok, Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and the author of Digital Authoritarianism (2024)

In an era defined by digital transformation and authoritarian adaptation, few scholars have examined with such precision the relationship between internet access and political resistance. Kris Ruijgrok, Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, represents a new generation of researchers who challenge simplistic narratives about technology and freedom. His work asks urgent questions: What happens to protest movements when information becomes scarce? How do ordinary citizens navigate the internet in regimes that seek to control it? And what role does digital access play in challenging authoritarian power?

The Scholar and His Field

Ruijgrok’s research sits at the intersection of several critical areas: internet studies, protest movements, authoritarianism, and digital influence operations. At the University of Amsterdam, he investigates how authoritarian regimes weaponize digital technologies—and how citizens exploit the same technologies to resist. His scholarly contributions have appeared in academic journals and collaborative works that examine the ethics of studying dissent in repressive contexts. He is also co-author of Research, Ethics and Risk in the Authoritarian Field (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), which addresses the methodological and moral challenges researchers face when studying protest and resistance in closed societies.

What distinguishes Ruijgrok’s work is his refusal to treat the internet as a neutral tool. He recognizes that digital platforms operate within political contexts—contexts that shape what information flows, who can access it, and what risks dissidents face. This nuanced perspective has made him a leading voice in understanding how internet access, or the deliberate restriction of it, shapes the possibilities for collective action.

The Book: Internet Use and Protest in Malaysia and other Authoritarian Regimes

Published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021, Internet Use and Protest in Malaysia and other Authoritarian Regimes: Challenging Information Scarcity represents the culmination of Ruijgrok’s doctoral research—and a significant contribution to political science and digital studies. The book’s central claim is both straightforward and profound: in authoritarian regimes, internet access and use fundamentally alter the conditions under which protest can emerge and spread.

Traditional scholarship on protest has long emphasized material grievances—economic hardship, political repression, inequality. But there is a prerequisite to political mobilization that scholars often overlook: people must know that grievances are shared, that others are dissatisfied, that collective action is possible. In closed information environments—societies where state media dominates and independent journalism is suppressed—this knowledge is scarce. People may chafe under authoritarianism, but they may not know they are not alone. The internet disrupts this isolation. It creates alternative channels for information circulation, enables citizens to discover one another, and provides platforms for organizing resistance.

Ruijgrok examines this dynamic with particular attention to Malaysia, a country where democratic institutions coexist with significant authoritarian tendencies. Malaysia’s media landscape is heavily controlled, yet internet penetration has grown steadily. By studying how Malaysians use digital platforms to discuss politics, share information, and mobilize for collective action, Ruijgrok illuminates the broader mechanisms through which internet access challenges information scarcity and enables protest.

Why This Work Matters Now

The publication of Ruijgrok’s book coincides with a troubling global trend: the rise of digital authoritarianism. Across the world, regimes have developed sophisticated technologies to monitor, control, and suppress internet use. Internet shutdowns—complete or partial blackouts of connectivity—have become a weapon of political control in countries from Myanmar to Sudan. Censorship algorithms filter political content with increasing precision. Surveillance systems track dissidents across digital platforms. Meanwhile, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns flood social media, creating confusion and undermining the very information environments that might support resistance.

Against this backdrop, Ruijgrok’s research offers essential clarity. It reminds us that the relationship between the internet and political freedom is not predetermined. The internet does not automatically liberate; it depends on access, on the informational environment it creates, and on the structural conditions that enable or constrain its use. Her work suggests that understanding how authoritarians weaponize digital technologies—through shutdowns, censorship, and surveillance—requires first understanding how internet access fundamentally alters the terrain of political possibility.

Furthermore, Ruijgrok’s focus on information scarcity speaks to debates often obscured in Western digital discourse. In wealthy democracies, we tend to focus on information abundance—the proliferation of fake news, echo chambers, algorithmic bubbles. But for much of the world, the problem remains scarcity. State media monopolies, limited independent journalism, restricted international news access—these remain defining features of the information landscape in many authoritarian regimes. Understanding how the internet creates an alternative information sphere in these contexts is crucial for understanding contemporary protest movements from Hong Kong to Tehran.

An Essential Contribution

What makes Ruijgrok’s work essential reading is not merely its timeliness, but its intellectual rigor. She avoids techno-utopianism—the naive belief that technology automatically liberates—while also resisting techno-pessimism, which views all digital development as a tool of control. Instead, she offers a careful, empirically grounded analysis of how specific conditions shape the role that internet use plays in political mobilization. The internet is neither savior nor threat; it is a contested terrain on which authoritarians and resisters struggle for control.

For scholars studying digital politics, protest movements, and authoritarianism, Ruijgrok’s book provides both theoretical insight and empirical evidence. For engaged readers seeking to understand the digital dimensions of contemporary political struggle, it offers clarity on a question that will only become more pressing: how does digital access shape the possibilities for resistance to authoritarian rule? In our increasingly connected world, this question matters as much as it ever has.

Kris Ruijgrok reminds us that the internet’s relationship to freedom is still being written. It remains contested, contingent, and deeply political. To understand it well, we must turn to scholars who refuse easy answers—scholars like Ruijgrok, who insist on rigorous, nuanced analysis of how technology intersects with power, information, and resistance.

Bibliography

Book

Ruijgrok, K. (2021). Internet Use and Protest in Malaysia and other Authoritarian Regimes: Challenging Information Scarcity. Palgrave Macmillan.

Edited Volume

Ruijgrok, K. (2018). Research, Ethics and Risk in the Authoritarian Field. Palgrave Macmillan.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Ruijgrok, K. (2016). From the web to the streets: Internet and protests under authoritarian regimes. Democratization, 23(3), 498–521.

Ruijgrok, K. (2020). Illusion of control: How internet use generates anti-regime sentiment in authoritarian regimes. Contemporary Politics, 27(1), 1–21.

Ruijgrok, K. (2022). The authoritarian practice of issuing internet shutdowns in India: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s direct and indirect responsibility. Democratization.

Ruijgrok, K. (2024). The infrastructure of domestic influence operations: Cyber troops and public opinion manipulation through social media in Indonesia. The International Journal of Press/Politics.

Ruijgrok, K. (2025). Towards the comparative study of domestic influence operations: Cyber troops and elite competition in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Political Communication.

Ruijgrok, K. et al. (2025). Influence operations as brokerage: Political-economic infrastructures of manipulation in the 2022 Philippine elections. International Journal of Communication.

Ruijgrok, K. et al. (2025). Ramping up control: How judicial harassment and online smear campaigns work in tandem to limit dissent in Thailand. Democratization.