“International Negative Propaganda, Overseas Nationals, and Support for Autocratic Government​​” (with Rosemary Pang) (manuscript)​

Abstract: Overseas nationals—especially highly educated and internationally mobile citizens—are important targets for autocratic governments seeking to retain political loyalty, attract talent return, and bolster regime legitimacy abroad. Thus, authoritarian countries such as China use state-run propaganda beyond national borders to shape the attitudes of these populations. Alongside positive propaganda that highlights governmental achievements, negative propaganda that emphasizes the incompetence or malice of foreign governments is also widely used. But how effective is this strategy in promoting overseas nationals’ support for their government? This paper argues that international negative propaganda is less effective than positive propaganda because of the “backlash” against propaganda senders: receivers may suspect the sender’s motive because of their incongruent ideology or inconsistent information with the propaganda message. We implement two waves of a survey experiment on Chinese students in American universities using real COVID-19 propaganda messages from China’s official media. We find that while positive propaganda weakly promotes subjects’ support for their government, negative propaganda is not as effective, particularly on subjects who are ideologically liberal, do not see COVID-19 as very severe in America, or have received health kits from Chinese consulates. Our findings suggest that international negative propaganda is not an effective strategy to shift overseas nationals’ opinions in their government’s favor. More broadly, negative messaging against foreign governments may not help autocratic governments win the hearts and minds of overseas audiences.​

Average Treatment Effects: Positive Propaganda as Baseline