The 2022 CPAC will explore how traditional and social media in both authoritarian and democratic regimes disseminate propaganda and misinformation. We will also discuss the causes of misinformation and its consequences on domestic and international politics. The invited speakers are Erin Baggott Carter (USC), Hannah S. Chapman (Miami University), Jane Esberg (Princeton), Andrew Guess (Princeton), Carlo Horz (Texas A&M), Haifeng Huang (UC Merced), Ethan Porter (George Washington University), and Alexandra Siegel (University of Colorado at Boulder). This event will be held in person at the department of political science.
The graduate student organizers this year are Jordan H. McAllister and Tony Zirui Yang.
The detailed schedule of the conference could be downloaded [HERE].
Erin Baggott Carter (USC)
Title:
Broadcasting Out-Group Repression to the In-Group: Evidence from China
Abstract:
Many autocrats govern with an in-group, whose support must be secured, and an out-group, which is subject to repression. How do autocrats use in-group/out-group dynamics to secure their survival? One strategy, we argue, is to broadcast out-group repression to potential in-group dissenters as a signal of the regime’s capacity for violence. Empirically, we focus on China, where the government brutally represses ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Drawing on 1 million articles from six propaganda newspapers, we show that the regime broadcasts out-group repression to urban elites on each anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when 10% of Beijing residents joined anti-regime protests. To understand its effects, we conducted a nationally representative survey experiment during the June 2020 Tiananmen anniversary. Using a list experiment to mitigate preference falsification, we show that CCP propaganda about Uyghurs during the Tiananmen anniversary discourages protests among potential in-group dissenters because they fear repression.
Hannah S. Chapman (Miami University)
Title:
Dimensions of Media Engagement: Digital Media, Traditional Media, and Political Attitudes in Russia
Abstract:
How are distinct dimensions of media engagement associated with political attitudes and behaviors in non-democratic environments? Using data from four surveys conducted over the course of Russia’s contentious 2011-2012 election season, we distinguish the ways in which citizens in non-democracies engage with the media and how these forms of engagement are associated with pro-regime and oppositional political attitudes. We identify five distinctive dimensions of media engagement: online political information seeking, online political communication, traditional media usage, and two forms of social networking. Of the four dimensions of new media usage, only online communication is consistently associated with political attitudes. While traditional media usage is consistently associated with pro-regime attitudes, individuals who use the internet for political communication hold oppositional, though not necessarily liberal or democratic, attitudes. We find no evidence that social media usage and political information seeking are linked to either pro-regime or oppositional attitudes. These results suggest that online political engagement is a complicated, multi-dimensional concept that must be empirically separated. Furthermore, our results throw doubt upon the claim that the internet drives opposition by providing alternative sources of information to government-controlled media in non-democratic regimes.
Jane Esberg (Princeton University and International Crisis Group)
Title:
Employment Restriction as Repression: Evidence from Argentina’s Film Industry
Abstract:
This paper explores the individual-level effects of a common form of repression: employment restriction. To do so, I match members of the film industry who appeared on the Argentine dictatorship’s artistic “black lists” – which limited career opportunities for suspected communists between 1976 and 1982 – to their online movie database pages. Compared to other Argentine cast and crew, inclusion on the list is associated with fewer roles, partially moderated by working abroad. However, it is also associated with more backlash: after the dictatorship ended, targeted artists were more likely to be involved in movies dealing with authoritarianism. Additional results suggest this is not entirely due to ideology. A comparison to the 1950s “Hollywood blacklist” provides evidence such backlash is common, but timing may depend on state control over both individuals and industries. Results provide new evidence on the impact of even non-violent forms of repression on careers and politics.
Andrew Guess (Princeton University)
Title:
Does Social Influence Shape Online Political Expression? Evidence from a Longitudinal Field Experiment
Abstract:
(The details of the presented work will be coming soon.)
Carlo Horz (Texas A&M University)
Title:
How To Keep Citizens Disengaged: Propaganda and Causal Misperceptions
Abstract:
Why are some countries more prone to frequent anti-government protests than others under similar conditions? Using Bayesian networks to explore causal misconceptions, we propose a model of subjective belief formation that gives a prominent role to history in explaining how protest cultures are formed and persist. We propose that past anti-regime actions may influence the inferences citizens make regarding the effect of protests on economic performance, even in the absence of a direct causal relationship. When regime strength is related to both economic performance and protests, it induces a correlation between the two variables, where the strength of the correlation is driven by the empirical frequency of protesting in the polity’s history. When citizens believe in a strongman narrative that postulates that regime strength produces good economic outcomes, citizens reason that fewer instances of past protests suggest a stronger correlation, rendering protests less likely in the current period.
Haifeng Huang (UC Merced)
Title:
Triumphalism and the Inconvenient Truth: Correcting Inflated National Self-Images in a Rising Power
Abstract:
Do people in a rising authoritarian power with pervasive propaganda and information control overestimate their country’s reputation, power, and influence in the world? Previous research on national overconfidence and grand self-imagery generally examines perceptions of hard power rather than soft power, and it focuses on the state or leadership level rather than the mass level. I show, with a survey conducted in 2020 and a pre-registered two-wave survey experiment in 2021, that the Chinese public overwhelmingly overestimates China’s global reputation and soft power relative to benchmark public opinion polls on China conducted around the world, even during a crisis. Importantly, informing Chinese citizens of China’s actual international image lowers their evaluations of the country and its governing system and moderates their expectations for its external success. These effects from simple information interventions are not fleeting, and they indicate that triumphalism and self-aggrandizement can be meaningfully mitigated.
Ethan Porter (George Washington University)
Title:
Increasing Demand for Fact-Checking: Lessons from Mixed Results
Abstract:
Fact-checks successfully persuade people to reject misinformation, but people who are exposed to misinformation rarely read fact-checks. This makes increasing the demand for fact-checking a crucial, understudied aspect of the fight against misinformation. We test several ways of increasing demand for fact-checking, with mixed results. In our first three studies, we find little evidence that accuracy primes or exposure to partisan-congenial fact-checks boosts willingness to read fact-checks. A fourth study reveals multiple promising candidates, including appealing to civic duty, exerting certain forms of social pressure, and providing monetary incentives. Our results illustrate the promise and pitfalls of attempting to increase demand for fact-checking.
Alexandra Siegel (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Title:
Political Reporting After Media Capture: Evidence from Egypt
Abstract:
What happens to political reporting after media capture? Developing real-time measures of the salience, stance, and meaning of political language in the largest existing dataset of Arabic news, we evaluate how political reporting changed in the aftermath of media capture in post-coup Egypt. We find that political language was not only used less frequently after the coup, but also expressed significantly more pro-regime sentiment, and less criticism of political institutions, actors, and processes — a core feature of deliberative democracy. By capturing temporally granular differences in the use and meaning of political language following democratic reversal, our work offers new insights into how contemporary authoritarian regimes control information.