Image from iMEdD, used with permission.
This article by Elli Kostika, Katerina Voutsina, and Kelly Kiki is an excerpt from a longer piece, first published on March 18, 2026, by the non-profit journalism organisation Incubator for Media Education and Development (iMEdD). This excerpt is published on Global Voices, with permission. It has been republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Any other use of images or charts by third parties require permission.
On January 8, 2026, Iran went dark. As protests spread across the country, the government imposed a near-total internet shutdown, cutting millions off from the outside world. The move came in response to the largest protests the country had witnessed since the 1979 revolution. During these protests, which started in late December 2025 and lasted almost a month, Iranian security forces carried out a sweeping crackdown, killing thousands of protesters, a number that spanned from 3,000 according to Iranian official figures, to 30,000, based on several reports.
Limited access returned in late January, but journalists still struggled to stay online. Then, hours after the first US-Israeli strikes hit Iran on February 28, authorities imposed another internet blackout.
On March 11, 2026, Access Now, a nonprofit organization that protects the digital rights of vulnerable communities, urgently called on the Iranian authorities to restore full internet access and to refrain from imposing further disruptions. The organization reemphasized that “internet shutdowns in conflict zones have life-and-death consequences. They put civilians at risk of death, injury, and illness, cause psychological trauma and mental distress, disrupt livelihoods, and block people’s access to essentials for survival like food and medicine. They also block journalists and human rights defenders, weaken social cohesion, and cause lasting socio-economic harm long after connectivity is restored.”
Internet shutdowns are not new. Access Now defines them as “intentional disruption of internet or electronic communications” for a specific population or location.
In its STOP dataset, the organization has documented close to 2,000 internet shutdowns between 2016 and 2024, with the number of blackouts rising since 2020. The team relies on a context-driven methodology, manually verifying each event through local media, United Nations contacts, and regional partners to determine the primary cause behind internet shutdowns. Such disruptions are often “a precursor to atrocities and violence against civilians,” says Zach Rosson, the #KeepItOn Global Data and Research Lead at Access Now, speaking to iMEdD, adding that “throttling” is another form of an internet blackout, where the internet speed is intentionally slowed down to a level equivalent to 2G or less, making it unusable.
Reporting, verifying information, filing stories, and even paying bills or ordering food often depend on a stable connection. Yet, governments have increasingly turned off the internet, cut mobile networks, or blocked apps, imposing what experts describe as “digital curfews” or “kill switches.” Often deployed during moments of conflict or unrest, these shutdowns sever the free flow of information, leaving journalists struggling to stay connected, as rumors and misinformation spread.
Reporting under blackout
Mehdi Mahmoudian, an Iranian political and human rights activist and former journalist, who is currently based in Iran, told iMEdD via WhatsApp in early March that internet shutdowns make it difficult to verify or publish information. “As someone engaged in documenting human rights violations and collaborating with journalists and civil society networks, the loss of internet access effectively prevented me from verifying information, sharing testimonies, or reporting on what was happening”, said Mahmoudian, a co-writer of the 2026 Oscar-nominated film “It Was Just an Accident.” Over the past 16 years, he has been arrested 13 times and has spent nine years in prison because of his journalism and activist work.
He was most recently arrested on January 31, 2026, after signing a statement with other Iranian journalists and activists expressing support for the mass protests in Iran; he was released on February 17. “Basic communication with colleagues, friends, and family was also disrupted. In such situations, individuals can feel cut off not only from the global internet but also, to some extent, from their own society,” he told us a few weeks later.
Iran has not been a unique case. Between 2019 and 2021, India imposed a 552-day internet blackout in Jammu and Kashmir, leaving some 12 million residents without reliable service in the name of national security.
This visualization that from Access Now’s STOP dataset shows how often internet shutdowns happen across countries.
Since 2017, laws have outlined the circumstances under which the government can cut connections. Those rules were replaced by the Temporary Suspension of Telecommunication Services Rules, 2024, which came into effect on November 22, 2024. Still, analysts who measure shutdowns in the country say the government frequently issues blanket shutdowns that exceed what the law allows.
“The government is acutely aware of the power of the internet and how it shapes public discourse, how it can be leveraged politically, and when it can be curtailed. Internet shutdowns in India predate the current administration, but their use has expanded significantly in recent years,” said Sadhika Tiwari, an independent journalist and host of Eco India for Deutsche Welle.
Similarly, in Ethiopia, internet access has also been used as a tool for control during conflict. In northern Ethiopia, the Tigray region was largely cut off from the internet for nearly two years, from November 2020 to February 2023, after the government imposed a shutdown following clashes between Ethiopia’s federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
“One of the most obvious things is that we’re not able to get photos and videos. That’s the biggest drawback,” Maya Misikir, a freelance journalist from Ethiopia, told iMEdD. Not being able to see what other news outlets are publishing online was another challenge for her.
When the Amhara conflict escalated in the summer of 2023, Misikir was able to talk to sources just on the phone. “Sometimes the connection was really bad, so you had to make appointments. […] Plans didn’t always follow through, and stories were delayed. Sometimes they didn’t happen. It just took longer,” she added.
Targeted censorship
While reporting in Turkey, Metin Cihan, a Turkish activist and social media journalist now living in exile in Germany, faced a different constraint: social media censorship.
“Internet or social media, at least in Turkey, are something people can use until it starts to be very annoying for the government. When it comes to that level, they just turn off the button,” he said to iMEdD. Cihan, now part of ECPMF’s Journalists-in-Residence program, decided to flee from Turkey in 2019, after facing online harassment linked to his investigation into the suspicious death of 11-year-old Rabia Naz in northern Turkey.
In 2025, his X (formerly Twitter) account, which now has more than half a million followers, he said, was blocked. “Internet or social media, at least in Turkey, are something people can use until it starts to be very annoying for the government. When it comes to that level, they just turn off the button,” he said.
For more than a decade, the Open Observatory of Network Interference, known as OONI, has worked with digital rights groups around the world to shed light on targeted censorship, which involves the blocking of specific websites or apps.
“We’ve definitely seen a spike in the blocking of social media and VPN websites in recent years, especially during political events,” said Maria Xynou, who leads the organization’s research program. As she explained, targeted censorship happens during protests, elections, conflicts, or wars, when there’s more political incentive to censor information to control narratives.
OONI investigates censorship through its free software app, OONI Probe, which collects data through crowdsourcing. Volunteers around the world install it on their phones and computers to run tests on their local networks. The results are sent back and published as open data in real time to increase transparency. But without internet access, users cannot run the tests, and no data can be collected.
You can read the second part of this story on the iMEdD website.
