Governing the information ecosystem under authoritarian power: epistemic conditions of public reasoning in Türkiye

Abstract

Contemporary authoritarian powers often advance while democratic institutions and practices remain formally preserved and their substantive functioning is gradually weakened. Elections continue, opposition actors remain present, the media are not entirely silenced, and democratic discourse continues to circulate. Yet this formal continuity can obscure a deeper restructuring of the epistemic conditions under which political meaning, truth claims, public reasoning, and legitimacy are produced and contested. This article examines authoritarian power under conditions of formal democratic continuity by focusing on the information ecosystem. It argues that authoritarianism is reproduced by the legal, technical, and institutional shaping of the epistemic field. Drawing on Foucault, Gramsci, and Althusser, the article conceptualizes this process as an epistemic structuring of power that reshapes the conditions under which knowledge claims become visible, credible, and politically reasonable. It identifies four interconnected mechanisms: infrastructural control, visibility regimes, the redistribution of epistemic authority, and strategic uncertainty. Türkiye provides an analytically revealing case in which content removal, access blocking, platform obligations, regulatory powers, and uncertainty surrounding online expression increasingly shape the digital public sphere. The article contributes to debates on authoritarianism and democratic communication by showing how the governance of the information ecosystem can narrow the epistemic conditions necessary for meaningful public reasoning and political contestation.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Frontiers in Communication, 2026 · DOI ↗