Sometimes Less Is More: Censorship, News Falsification, and Disapproval in 1989 East Germany

Gläßel, Christian; Paula, Katrin

doi:10.1111/ajps.12501

Cited by 39 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…I also shed light on another puzzle in the literature on autocracies: why non-democratic regimes allow independent media, which may undermine the plausibility of propaganda (Gläßel and Paula 2020). Previous work has argued that such media can provide autocrats with useful information (Egorov, Guriev, and Sonin 2009;Lorentzen 2014) or make citizens more content (Kern and Hainmueller 2009;Huang and Yeh 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 86%

Rethinking Propaganda: How State Media Build Trust Through Belief Affirmation

Shirikov¹

2022

Preprint

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Research on propaganda and censorship often focuses on strategies that autocrats can use to persuade skeptical citizens. I argue that this focus overestimates the role of persuasion in authoritarian rule, and I describe a different strategy that popular autocrats can use—affirmation propaganda—that builds credibility by speaking to citizens' existing views. Affirmation propaganda results in more positive perceptions of propaganda outlets and in skepticism about independent media. I test this argument using three studies in Russia. In two randomized experiments, I demonstrate that pro-regime citizens trust reports from state media more than reports from independent media. Additional survey evidence suggests that regime supporters deny disinformation and censorship by propaganda outlets despite often recognizing the pro-government bias of these outlets. One implication of this analysis is that independent media pose less of a challenge to authoritarian rule than previously thought. I also discuss the limitations of affirmation propaganda.

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confidence: 86%

Rethinking Propaganda: How State Media Build Trust Through Belief Affirmation

Shirikov¹

2022

Preprint

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“…In many authoritarian countries, traditional and online media limit access to information (16)(17)(18)(19). While this control is imperfect, studies have shown that media control in autocracies has large effects on the opinions of the general public and the resilience of authoritarian regimes (20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26), even though there are moments when it can backfire (9,(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32). Evidence from China suggests that media control may be effective in part because individuals generally do not expend significant energy to find censored or alternative sources of information.…”

Section: Crisis Is a Gateway To Censored Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 increased censorship circumvention and access to sensitive topics in China

Chang

Hobbs

Roberts

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Crisis motivates people to track news closely, and this increased engagement can expose individuals to politically sensitive information unrelated to the initial crisis. We use the case of the COVID-19 outbreak in China to examine how crisis affects information seeking in countries that normally exert significant control over access to media. The crisis spurred censorship circumvention and access to international news and political content on websites blocked in China. Once individuals circumvented censorship, they not only received more information about the crisis itself but also accessed unrelated information that the regime has long censored. Using comparisons to democratic and other authoritarian countries also affected by early outbreaks, the findings suggest that people blocked from accessing information most of the time might disproportionately and collectively access that long-hidden information during a crisis. Evaluations resulting from this access, negative or positive for a government, might draw on both current events and censored history.

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“…Physical surveillance includes numerous techniques: the following and monitoring of targets, opening correspondence, eavesdropping, and use of informants. Therefore, surveillance constitutes a distinct form of state repression compared with alternative nonviolent forms of repression such as detentions (Truex 2019), censorship (Gläßel and Paula 2019), or internet restrictions (Gohdes 2020).…”

Section: Surveillance and Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The dearth of evidence is surprising, given that physical surveillance constitutes one of the most consistently used measures of repression (Shelley 1996). Particularly in the former Eastern Bloc, regimes employed tens of thousands of agents to systematically spy on citizens (Gläßel and Paula 2019;Lichter, Löffler, and Siegloch 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does State Repression Spark Protests? Evidence from Secret Police Surveillance in Communist Poland

Hager

Krakowski

2021

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Does physical surveillance hinder or foster antiregime resistance? A common view holds that surveillance prevents resistance by providing regimes with high-quality intelligence on dissident networks and by instilling fear in citizens. We contrast this view using formerly classified data from Communist Poland. We find that communities exposed to secret police officers were more likely to organize protests but also engaged in less sabotage. To ensure that the relationship is causal, we use an instrumental variable strategy, which exploits the exogenous assignment of Catholic “spy priests” to local communities. To trace the underlying mechanisms, we draw on qualitative interviews and archival sources. We document that Poland’s comprehensive use of surveillance created widespread anger as well as an incentive for citizens to reveal their true loyalties, thus facilitating antiregime collective action. Once on the streets, protesters refrained from sabotage to signal their political motivation to bystanders and authorities alike.

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Sometimes Less Is More: Censorship, News Falsification, and Disapproval in 1989 East Germany

Cited by 39 publications

References 62 publications

Rethinking Propaganda: How State Media Build Trust Through Belief Affirmation

Rethinking Propaganda: How State Media Build Trust Through Belief Affirmation

COVID-19 increased censorship circumvention and access to sensitive topics in China

Does State Repression Spark Protests? Evidence from Secret Police Surveillance in Communist Poland

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