Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (2 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2022)

The vast majority of Russians depend on state-controlled media as their primary source of information about politics and current events. These news outlets deliberately bias their reports to flatter the country's political leaders. They spread pro-Kremlin propaganda and suppress critical coverage of the regime. Given this distortion, what explains the popularity of these sources? In this dissertation, I draw on evidence from three original surveys about Russian media habits, attitudes toward news media, and political beliefs to examine demand for news in Russia. These reveal the complex ways in which Russians process social and political information. Preferences for different types of content, beliefs about sources, and differences in accessibility interact to shape their viewing choices.

The results of this dissertation suggest that most Russians are aware, at least to some degree, of the biases of state media. Nonetheless, they still consider these sources to provide valuable information. This, in part, stems from beliefs about the access these news outlets have to information and some distrust in available alternative sources. It is not the case that Russians are generally active supporters of the kinds of censorship that state news outlets deploy. However, concerns about censorship must be traded off against news consumers' other priorities. In some circumstances, news audiences will even prefer a degree of censorship if information is framed as a threat to social stability. Overall, state news outlets have succeeded in producing a product that many Russian news consumers genuinely value, even if the contents are subject to bias and distortion. Russian news audiences find the content of state media to be interesting, important, and relevant. It encourages positive emotions such as pride and hope. It affirms those who are deeply attached to their Russian identity and feel positively about their leaders.

The results of this dissertation have important implications for understanding the way modern authoritarian regimes stay in power. It is easier for autocrats to stay in power if they are genuinely popular, and information control and propaganda can be important tools for turning public opinion in the autocrat's favor. When propaganda is genuinely popular, it can be far more useful as a persuasive tool. Maintaining total control over the flow of information is extremely difficult and attempts to do so can backfire. However, if people willingly consume state media, the state can reap the benefits of shaping public opinion without all of the associated costs.

    Cover page: Choosing Propaganda: Media Selection and Politics in Putin's Russia
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UCLA Previously Published Works (2021)
    AbstractEconomics games such as the Dictator and Public Goods Games have been widely used to measure ethnic bias in political science and economics. Yet these tools may fail to measure bias as intended because they are vulnerable to self-presentational concerns and/or fail to capture bias rooted in more automatic associative and affective reactions. We examine a set of misattribution-based approaches, adapted from social psychology, that may sidestep these concerns. Participants in Nairobi, Kenya completed a series of common economics games alongside versions of these misattribution tasks adapted for this setting, each designed to detect bias toward noncoethnics relative to coethnics. Several of the misattribution tasks show clear evidence of (expected) bias, arguably reflecting differences in positive/negative affect and heightened threat perception toward noncoethnics. The Dictator and Public Goods Games, by contrast, are unable to detect any bias in behavior toward noncoethnics versus coethnics. We conclude that researchers of ethnic and other biases may benefit from including misattribution-based procedures in their tool kits to widen the set of biases to which their investigations are sensitive.
      Cover page: Measuring Ethnic Bias: Can Misattribution-Based Tools from Social Psychology Reveal Group Biases that Economics Games Cannot?
      Top