21–23 Jun 2021
Europe/London timezone
22 Jun 2021, 18:00

Description

How does an autocracy use its domestic mass media in diversionary war making? Because of the empirical challenges, earlier studies have provided only an inconclusive answer to this question. This article offers the first large scale evidence of an extensive attempt to influence the importance of foreign conflict in the eyes of domestic audience. I argue that when the mass media is state-controlled and trusted by the population, the regime may use warfare news to implement strategies of agenda-setting and distraction. This argument is tested using semi-supervised Naive Bayes - based geographical classification of 2.4 million news stories transmitted in Russia in 2009 - 2019. Using the state-enforced change of management in a media outlet to instrument for the regime’s control, I demonstrate that national television, the most popular and trusted news source in the country, on average reported 55% more stories about international conflicts then other, relatively free media.

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