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Chinese Politics Mini-Conference: Propaganda and Surveillance: Maintaining Legitimacy and Compliance in China

Sat, September 17, 9:45 to 11:15am, TBA

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Part of Mini-Conference

Session Description

This panel investigates two of the most salient features of authoritarian politics–propaganda and surveillance–in the context of China. Waight and her co-authors examine the extent to which news is government-directed and its subsequent implications. Drawing on a database of six million newspaper articles, leaked propaganda directives, and case studies, they find increased state propaganda coordination that results in crowding out information of public interest. MacDonald and Cao deploy a survey experiment to uncover that receptivity to new propaganda messages is mediated by the frameworks and psychological processes that one holds. Scoggins analyzes public perceptions of police propaganda on social media through a mixed methods approach, revealing state propaganda adaptation in the digital age and its apparent effectiveness. Adopting a quasi-natural experiment design, Zhan and Chen analyze survey data coinciding two waves of digital surveillance projects, finding that while newly introduced digital surveillance can generate fear and induce compliance among citizens, such effect wanes over time and may even backfire in the long run. Together these four papers, with innovative research methods and data sources, provide updated and more refined understanding of state propaganda and digital surveillance in China as well as the implications for regime legitimacy and public compliance.

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