Author: Sirotkina, Elena
Description: If a medium has a monopoly in covering political news and daily distorts the news in favor of the ruling autocrat, how large will the persuasion effect be? Through which channels will such persuasion operate most? Working with a representative sample of the Russian population, I use a causal mediation analysis to explore whether (1) frequency of exposure and/or (2) reliance on biased reporting mediate the link between how people voted for incumbent elites and how they evaluate these elites in the present. Perceiving explicitly biased information as credible transmits a large and robust effect from voting to evaluation, while frequent exposure to this information produces an insignificant mediating effect. Another important finding is that the effect of perceived news credibility overrides the effect of previous electoral support: Accepting state propaganda as credible information converts people into regime supporters even if they did not support these elites at previous election.
Subject headings: Propaganda; Government; State; Persuasion; Autocracy; Authoritarianism; Credibility
Publication year: 2021
Journal or book title: European Journal of Communication
Volume: 36
Issue: 2
Pages: 183-200
Find the full text: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0267323120966840
Find more like this one (cited by): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1672543741579610621&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en
Serial number: 3727