Escaping the Brown Shadows: Right-Wing Propaganda Motivates Dissociation From One's National Ingroup and Turning Towards Alternative Identities

• In Event: Top Papers in Intergroup Communication

Abstract

Prior research found the distancing from extremist propaganda to be dependent on (a) shared group identity of propagator and recipient; and (b) educational level. Students’ evaluated ingroup propaganda more negatively than outgroup videos, apprentices showed the reversed pattern. It has been suggested that this is due to different strategies students and apprentices use to defend against the identity-threat emerging from ingroup propaganda. Students were assumed to dissociate from the threatened group by turning towards their academic identity (individual-level strategy), meanwhile apprentices were claimed to change the perception of the whole group (group-level strategy). However, no study so far tested the effects of ingroup propaganda on social identity defenses directly.
Two experiments aimed at closing this gap by confronting German students with right-wing extremist propaganda videos. The results confirmed ingroup propaganda to motivate individual mobility towards alternative academic (Study 1) and superordinate (Study 2) identities. Results are discussed concerning their implications.

Authors

• Lena Frischlich, University of Cologne

• Diana Rieger, University of Mannheim

• Gary Bente, U of Cologne