Philipp Matthias Lutscher

Postdoctoral Fellow - Institutt for Statsvitenskap

Email p.m.lutscher@stv.uio.no

Room 923

Username

Visiting address Gullhaug torg 1 0484 Oslo

Postal address Postboks 1097 Blindern 0317 Oslo

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Academic interests

Most of my research deals with the question of how modern day authoritarian governments control information. I am especially interested in the use and impact of cyber operations, online censoring, propaganda, indoctrination and repressive Internet laws. My general research interests include comparative politics, conflict studies, contentious politics, and quantitative methods.

Courses

tba

Project

I am a member of the The Emergence, Life, and Demise of Autocratic Regimes (ELDAR) project led by Carl Henrik Knutsen.

Background

Before coming to the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo in October 2020, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the “Communication, Networks and Contention” group at the Department of Politics and Public Administration and a member of the Excellence Cluster “Politics of Inequality” at the University of Konstanz. Before, I was a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Decision Science at the same university.

My C.V. can be found here

Tags: Comparative Politics, Dictatorship, Technology

Publications

Scientific articles and bookchapters

Breznau, Nate; Rinke, Eike Mark; Wuttke, Alexander; Nguyen, Hung H.V.; Adem, Muna & Adriaans, Jule [Show all 166 contributors for this article] (2022). Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. ISSN 0027-8424. 119(44). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2203150119.
Lutscher, Philipp (2021). Hot topics: Denial-of-Service attacks on news websites in autocracies. Political Science Research and Methods. ISSN 2049-8470. p. 1–16. doi: 10.1017/psrm.2021.68. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Most authoritarian countries censor the press. As a response, many opposition and independent news outlets have found refuge on the Internet. Despite the global character of the Internet, news outlets are vulnerable to censorship in cyberspace. This study investigates Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on news websites in Venezuela and details how news reporting is related to DoS attacks in an attempt to censor content. For this empirical test, I monitored 19 Venezuelan news websites from November 2017 until June 2018 and continuously retrieved their content and status codes to infer DoS attacks. Statistical analyses show that news content correlates to DoS attacks. In the Venezuelan context, these news topics appear to be not only on protest and repression but also on opposition actors or other topics that question the legitimacy of the regime. By establishing these relationships, this study deepens our understanding of how modern technologies are used as censorship tools.
Lutscher, Philipp (2021). Digital Retaliation? Denial-of-Service Attacks after Sanction Events . Journal of Global Security Studies (JoGGS). ISSN 2057-3170. 6(4), p. 1–11. doi: 10.1093/jogss/ogab001. Full text in Research Archive
Lutscher, Philipp; Weidmann, Nils B.; Roberts, Margaret E.; Jonker, Mattijs; King, Alistair & Dainotti, Alberto (2020). At Home and Abroad: The Use of Denial-of-service Attacks during Elections in Nondemocratic Regimes . Journal of Conflict Resolution. ISSN 0022-0027. 64(2-3), p. 373–401. doi: 10.1177/0022002719861676.

View all works in Cristin

Published Oct. 5, 2020 5:19 PM - Last modified Dec. 9, 2021 4:17 PM

Projects

Emergence, Life, and Demise of Autocratic Regimes (ELDAR)