How Soft Propaganda Persuades

Mattingly, Daniel; Yao, Elaine

doi:10.1177/00104140211047403

Cited by 54 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(91 reference statements)

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“…The second treatment, which criticized the United States, drew on three tweets from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and two from Zhao Lijian, who in addition to being deputy director 7 See Mattingly and Yao (2022) for an example of how similar messaging can stoke emotion and anti-foreign sentiment directed at another nation's people.…”

Section: Public Diplomacy Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When does public diplomacy work? Evidence from China's “wolf warrior” diplomats

Mattingly

Sundquist

2022

PSRM

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How does public diplomacy shape global public opinion? In this note, we theorize that positive public diplomacy that emphasizes aid and friendship works, while negative messages that criticize international rivals are ineffective. We conduct an experiment, to our knowledge the first of its kind, that randomly exposes Indian citizens to real Twitter messages from Chinese diplomats. We find that positive messages emphasizing aid and friendship improve perceptions of China, even in times of escalating violent conflict. However, messages from so-called “Wolf Warrior” diplomats that harshly criticize the United States are ineffective and can backfire in times of crisis. We argue public diplomacy can be a useful tool for global powers, but that domestic political pressures have pushed some diplomats, like China's Wolf Warriors, toward nationalist messages that do not appeal to foreign audiences.

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Section: Public Diplomacy Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When does public diplomacy work? Evidence from China's “wolf warrior” diplomats

Mattingly

Sundquist

2022

PSRM

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“…This led Huang (2015) to suggest that the Chinese state-run social media strategy involves hard and soft propaganda. Hard propaganda is biased information that frames the ruling party positively without mobilizing emotions, whereas soft propaganda involves emotional mobilization (Huang, 2015;Xia, 2020;Mattingly and Yao, 2022). Multiple studies have indicated that official Chinese propaganda outlets have achieved a delicate balance between positive and negative emotions to evoke emotional resonance and creative engagement (Kong, 2016;Fang and Repnikova, 2018;Gao and Wu, 2019), especially during the COVID-19 pandemic (Zhang, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The softening of Chinese digital propaganda: Evidence from the People’s Daily Weibo account during the pandemic

Zhang

Shao

2023

Front. Psychol.

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IntroductionSocial media infuses modern relationships with vitality and brings a series of information dissemination with subjective consciousness. Studies have indicated that official Chinese media channels are transforming their communication style from didactic hard persuasion to softened emotional management in the digital era. However, previous studies have rarely provided valid empirical evidence for the communicational transformation. The study fills the gap by providing a longitudinal time-series analysis to reveal the pattern of communication of Chinese digital Chinese official media from 2019 to 2022.MethodThe study crawler collected 43,259 posts from the People’s Daily’s Weibo account from 2019 to 2021. The study analyzed the textual data with using trained artificial intelligence models.ResultsThis study explored the practices of the People’s Daily’s Weibo account from 2019 to 2021, COVID-19 is hardly normalized as it is still used as the justification for extraordinary measures in China. This study confirmed that People’s Daily’s Weibo account posts are undergoing softenization transformation, with the use of soft news, positive energy promotion, and the embedding of sentiment. Although the outburst of COVID-19 temporarily increased the media’s use of hard news, it only occur at the initial stage of the pandemic. Emotional posts occupy a nonnegligible amount of the People’s Daily Weibo content. However, the majority of posts are emotionally neutral and contribute to shaping the authoritative image of the party press.DiscussionOverall, the People’s Daily has softened their communication style on digital platforms and used emotional mobilization, distraction, and timely information provision to balance the political logic of building an authoritative media agency and the media logic of constructing audience relevance.

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“…They can use their media power to stir nationalist sentiments and shift the voters' attention away from the economy (Aytac ¸2021;Yilmaz et al 2021;Mattingly and Yao 2021). Yet, can authoritarian propaganda also be used to shape economic perceptions and performance evaluations, especially, during periods of economic decline?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whisper Sweet Nothings to Me Erdogan: How Economic Propaganda Works Under Authoritarianism

Öztürk¹

2022

Preprint

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Most authoritarian regimes justify their rule based on economic performance. Yet, scholars are skeptical that authoritarian propaganda can increase performance evaluations. Through a case study of Turkey, combining qualitative, cross-sectional, and experimental analysis, this paper demonstrates that narrative-based economic propaganda can help electoral authoritarian regimes to preserve their support base even under difficult economic conditions. A national developmentalist narrative is central to the economic propaganda of Erdogan’s regime. I demonstrate that the belief in this narrative is widespread among regime voters, and it is strongly related to watching pro-regime media. The exposure to the developmentalist narrative improves economic evaluations among regime voters while also evoking partisan emotions. However, I do not find any effect of this narrative on other voters, demonstrating that narrative-based propaganda cannot help the regime to broaden its support base. This study contributes to the development of a cultural perspective on public opinion formation under authoritarian regimes.

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How Soft Propaganda Persuades

Cited by 54 publications

References 62 publications

When does public diplomacy work? Evidence from China's “wolf warrior” diplomats

When does public diplomacy work? Evidence from China's “wolf warrior” diplomats

The softening of Chinese digital propaganda: Evidence from the People’s Daily Weibo account during the pandemic

Whisper Sweet Nothings to Me Erdogan: How Economic Propaganda Works Under Authoritarianism

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