6 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL WAR work of activists, they do “create pressure and additional costs, as activists are forced to consider their online behavior and protect their communications.”24 Repression also sends a message to other members of the diaspora that they should refrain from engaging in similar behaviour.25 Further, self-censorship leads “victims of transnational repression to purposefully avoid alerting local law enforcement to threats to their personal safety.”26 Repression undermines the capacity of the diaspora to engage in independent journalism, curbs the ability of universities to ensure free speech, and makes public demonstrations in host countries a dangerous activity.27 Family members who reside in the country of origin may also be caught in the practice. Authoritarian regimes threaten and detain exiled dissidents’ family members within their borders to send a warning to halt anti-regime activity abroad.28 The Iranian regime, for instance, has paired threats against dissidents with threats against or the detention of family members who reside within Iran.29 Iranian activists have sought to protect their relatives back home by keeping them “at arm’s length.”30 Dissidents are forced to either silence themselves or cut ties with their family members in order to protect them. Through interviews with Syrian activists based in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2016, researchers similarly observed how many dissidents ultimately experienced “network erosion” with their family members due to the digital presence of pro-regime agents.31 24 Ibid at 256. 25 See also Emanuela Dalmasso, Adele Del Sordi, Marlies Glasius, Nicole Hirt, Marcus Michaelsen, Abdulkader S. Mohammad, and Dana Moss (2017), “Intervention: Extraterritorial Authoritarian Power,” Political Geography 64 at 4 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.07.003> [Dalmasso et al., “Intervention”]. 26 Dana M Moss (2020), “The Importance of Defending Diaspora Activism for Democracy and Human Rights,” Freedom House <https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/importancedefending-diaspora-activism-democracy-and-human-rights> [Moss, “Defending Diaspora Activism”]. 27 Ibid. 28 Adamson and Tsourapas, “Coercion-by-Proxy.” 29 Schenkkan and Linzer, Freedom House Report at 37. 30 Freedom House (2021), “Iran: Transnational Repression Case Study,” Freedom House <https:// freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/iran>. 31 Dana M Moss (2018), “The Ties That Bind: Internet Communication Technologies, Networked Authoritarianism, and ‘Voice’ in the Syrian Diaspora,” Globalizations 15(2) at 276 [Moss, “Ties That Bind”].