Introduction

In February 2013, the Saudi Minister of Culture andInformation Abdulaziz Khoja admitted to the Saudidaily Al Watan thatthe authorities were struggling to cope with theKingdom's surging use of Twitter (Albawaba 2013). The platformwas booming, growing by up to 600 per cent per yearaccording to some reports and challenging theauthorities’ ability to censor and block content(GSN 2012a). Like those who hailed the liberatingpotential of social media during the 2011 Arabuprisings, some labelled Twitter as a new Saudiparliament: a watershed moment in atightly-controlled political system centred on theruling Al Saud family (Worth 2012).

In the years that followed, however, the world watchedas the Kingdom turned the tides on this trend,transforming Saudi Twitter into a platform populatedby pro-regime influencers and automated ‘bots’creating the illusion of popular regime support. Therise to de facto power of Crown Prince Mohammed binSalman (MbS) has tightened authoritarian rule andsparked scandals on a global level – not least thehigh-profile murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi.Mass arrests have targeted princes, intellectuals,clerics, merchants and activists amidunprecedentedly pervasive surveillance, asauthorities search for current or potentialdissenters who may challenge MbS's hold on power(GSN 2021a). Saudi Arabia may have been anauthoritarian state since its inception in 1932, butthere are new dynamics at play in this personalisedcentralisation of power under MbS, as well as in therepressive practices used to maintain it.

What accounts for this rapid evolution of authoritarianrule in Saudi Arabia? The chapter aims to show thatmounting repression and digital surveillance arebound up with MbS's attempts to transform theKingdom into a global technology hub. As the regimeconducts tactical social and economic liberalisationto rebrand the Kingdom and draw in internationalinvestment, it perceives internal threats: fromimmediate political opponents (includingconservatives, liberals and sidelined royal familyelements) to the more long-term evolution of thatliberalisation into political demands from thepopulace. In response, MbS is transforming SaudiArabia into a new kind of authoritarian state inwhich conformity and loyalty to his vision isexpected, enforced and engineered through theabundance of data on citizens derived from highlevels of communication technology use.