How Soft Propaganda Persuades

TLDR

Authoritarian regimes employ hard propaganda to signal power, according to existing scholarship. This study links propaganda power to the emotional impact of soft propaganda such as TV dramas and viral social media. The authors exposed over 6,800 Chinese respondents to real propaganda videos from TV dramas, state‑backed social media, and state‑run newscasts containing nationalist messages. Propaganda manipulates anger and anti‑foreign sentiment, persisting up to a week, but does not affect perceptions of government performance or willingness to protest.

Abstract

An influential body of scholarship argues that authoritarian regimes design “hard” propaganda that is intentionally heavy-handed in order to signal regime power. In this study, by contrast, we link the power of propaganda to the emotional power of “soft” propaganda such as television dramas and viral social media content. We conduct a series of experiments in which we expose over 6800 respondents in China to real propaganda videos drawn from television dramas, state-backed social media accounts, and state-run newscasts, each containing nationalist messages favored by the Chinese Communist Party. In contrast to theories that propaganda is unpersuasive, we show that propaganda effectively manipulates anger as well as anti-foreign sentiment and behavior, with heightened anti-foreign attitudes persisting up to a week. However, we also find that nationalist propaganda has no effect on perceptions of Chinese government performance or on self-reported willingness to protest against the state.