Negative Propaganda and Regime Evaluations: Evidence from China
35 Pages Posted: 21 Jun 2023 Last revised: 10 Apr 2024
Date Written: April 6, 2024
Abstract
Authoritarian regimes often regard negative propaganda against Western democracies as a strategy to enhance their own legitimacy. Yet, we know little about its prevalence and efficacy. I argue that negative propaganda likely reduces evaluation of Western democracies because of its seemingly credible content and potentially fear-inducing information. However, it does not necessarily improve evaluation of the domestic regime. By analyzing over 900,000 Weibo posts from Chinese state-affiliated media, I show that negative coverage of Western countries has been increasingly prevalent. Meanwhile, such content appears credible and fear-inducing. With an original, pre-registered survey experiment in China, I show that negative propaganda significantly lowers evaluations of the Western democratic regime, but it does not significantly improve evaluations of the domestic regime. Further analyses suggest that both information and fear are plausible mechanisms. These results broaden the understanding of propaganda and its impact, and how authoritarian regimes survive in a changing information environment.
Keywords: propaganda, public opinion, fear, emotions, authoritarian regime, China
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