Critically Commenting Publics as Authoritarian Input Institutions: How Citizens Comment Beneath their News in Azerbaijan, Russia, and Turkmenistan

Abstract

Little is known presently about how, why, and with what consequences audiences comment beneath their news in contemporary authoritarian regimes. In order to contribute to the filling of this gap, this data set provides an overview of the extent of political criticism as it circulated (as of August/September 2018) in comment sections (N = 322) hosted by the 46 leading news of three authoritarian regimes (Turkmenistan, Russia, and Azerbaijan) across seven platforms (their own websites / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Instagram / Vkontakte / Odnoklassniki). The key coding decision concerns whether comments were published in these environments that were (1) critical of the autocrat himself, (2) critical only of lower-level policies or officials of the regime, or (3) entirely uncritical of the regime. In addition, the data set also contains information about the ownership of the news organization that facilitated the commenting public. The coding procedure and all variables coded are described in detail in the codebook uploaded with the data set.