ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evolution of propaganda in the digital age through the concept of authoritarian strategic communication. Challenging technologically deterministic accounts, it proposes an analytical framework that situates digital innovation within the interrelated technological, doctrinal, and organisational domains shaping authoritarian communication. Drawing on Russian examples, including the roles of troll factories, e-government platforms, generative AI, and Telegram influencers, the chapter demonstrates how technological affordances are embedded in evolving doctrines and institutional ecosystems. It introduces the notion of adaptive propaganda, defined as fluid, data-driven, and continuously adjusted communication aimed at maintaining regime stability rather than promoting fixed ideological beliefs. The analysis highlights the organisational transformation of propaganda from crowdsourcing and outsourcing to insourcing, showing how regimes increasingly integrate external actors such as NGOs and marketing agencies into state-controlled frameworks. This framework extends beyond Russia, offering a lens for analysing the diffusion of authoritarian communication practices in democratic contexts, where the boundaries between propaganda, strategic communication, and public relations increasingly blur. By connecting technological innovation to doctrinal flexibility and organisational adaptation, the chapter contributes to understanding how propaganda persists and transforms under conditions of digital connectivity, crisis, and illiberal drift, shaping the communicative infrastructures of contemporary power.
