Description
Diversionary conflict theory asserts that countries’ leaders can use an international crisis to shift the nation’s attention away from internal troubles and induce a rally-round-the-flag effect. However, international conflicts vary in scale and possible magnitude of outcome. Some are associated with a direct external threat, eliciting fear at home and inducing the domestic population to rally behind the leader. Other conflicts are too small or too geographically distant to present a situation where citizens feel threatened. Nevertheless, we know little about whether the domestic news outlets cover these two types of conflicts differently, in particular,in environments where the media is controlled by the state. This article explores the cover-age of international news by domestic state-aligned media outlets, inquiring as to whether an autocracy uses different agenda-setting strategies depending on the type of conflict. The analysis relies on content-analytic data drawn from the subtitles of eight state-controlled television channels over 11 years in Russia. Asymmetries in the media coverage are investigated using Newsmap, a semi-supervised machine learning model for geographical document classification. The results indicate that the media reporting on the conflict that possesses an external threat to domestic population differs from the coverage of the crisis that is too small or too geographically distant to present a situation where citizens feel threatened. It is also demonstrated that in their attempts to ensure the leader’s position in power, state-controlled media outlets prefer to explore the conflicts that do not pose a realistic threat to the in-group. These patterns make the strategic use of domestic media more understandable and identify some important conceptual problems with contemporary diversionary theory of war.
