Anti-corruption, Political Support, and Psychology of Propaganda in China

• In Event: The Soft Sell: Alternate Propaganda Strategies

Abstract

Anti-corruption campaigns are common in authoritarian regimes and are usually propagated to affect public political support. How do the different contents of the anti-corruption messages in the mass media affect citizens’ political trust? I conduct a survey experiment in China to investigate two potential psychological mechanisms of propaganda— priming, which activates citizens’ attention to specific topics, and learning, which provides the audience with new persuasive information. I hypothesize that if government propaganda affects political trust through priming, all the information relevant to (anti) corruption decreases public political support regardless of the content. In contrast, if propaganda plays its role via the learning mechanism, propaganda that contains information tailored toward persuasion may have positive effects on political support even though the activated issue cue is not in favor of the government. In other words, explaining to people how the government intends to address corrupt misconduct may boost political trust when the learning mechanism works. I also examine how information about (anti)corruption in other localities affects political support for the local government and for the regime as a whole. Will citizens show more support for leaders of their provinces if they see that other provinces are more corrupt? This paper contributes to the literature on propaganda, political support, and the “hierarchical trust” literature in Chinese politics.

Author

• Yixuan Zhang, Freie Universität Berlin