I was thinking the same thing. So far this tactic has not worked well in the cases where it has been tried, the last gasp of a desperate autocrat. On the other

I was thinking the same thing. So far this tactic has not worked well in the cases where it has been tried, the last gasp of a desperate autocrat. On the other hand, banning the media has worked well in the past, such as when China ordered the media out of Tiananmen before getting serious at the end. The problem is that nowadays with cellphones and twitter, banning the media accomplishes nothing because that merely deputizes the entire populace to become journalists. At Tiananmen no one could post to the internet from their cell phone. Things have changed since then. Now the only way to stop the media is to shut down the internet, cell phones, and land lines that might contact fax machines. But this leaves the autocrat with no reliable feedback about what is going on on the ground, while people manage to communicate news reports via satellite phone, ham radio, pigeons, across the border local wifi, and who knows what else. A big question is what will governments do in response to this loss of control, something they can not stand? Something like the great firewall of china is one solution - leave the internet running but have the ability to monitor 100% of net traffic in real time and block prohibited communication instantly. In the US there is an approach of monitoring traffic for keywords (but no blocking) combined with psyops such as persona management and media control in order to get the sheep to go in the direction the herder wants them to go.