(iPoster) When Does Foreign Propaganda Work? Evidence from Russia’s Operations in Mexico

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Political Communication II & The Political Power of Film and Reality TV
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Communication II

Abstract

Despite widespread alarm among media, policymakers, and scholars about the persuasive power of foreign propaganda, we lack clear evidence on whether influence operations actually work, and if they do, what makes them effective. Do certain narrative strategies prove more persuasive than others? Does concealing the source of the propaganda enhance its impact? Pairing a content analysis of posts from Russian government accounts with a survey experiment in Mexico, I find that the persuasive effects of foreign propaganda are more limited than commonly assumed, and that despite sophisticated efforts to conceal foreign origins, what the message says matters more than who appears to say it. I collect over 100,000 posts from Russian government-affiliated social media accounts targeting Latin American audiences. In recent years, Russia has strategically expanded its media presence in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, viewing the region as highly receptive to anti-American narratives, making it an important case for understanding how foreign propaganda operates outside of the West. Using structural topic modeling and large language models, I identify the substantive topics these accounts emphasize and classify the narrative strategies they employ. I find that accounts that are open about their association with the Russian government frequently combine self-promotion and demonization strategies, whereas accounts that try to obfuscate this connection take on negative and attack-driven framing more exclusively. I then design a survey experiment in Mexico exposing respondents to messages that mirror those identified in the content analysis. I manipulate how transparently the source is linked to the Russian government and test self-promotional versus attack-driven messages. I find that while self-promotional messaging increases favorability toward Russia and Russia-preferred policies, attack content proves largely ineffective. The concealment of the Russian government as the source also provides no persuasive advantage, challenging conventional source credibility theory, which predicts that audiences resist persuasion from sources with vested interests. More broadly, these findings reveal that the persuasive effects of foreign propaganda may be more constrained than contemporary fears suggest.

Author

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