Propaganda and Protest: Evidence from Post-Cold War Africa∗
نویسندگان
چکیده
Does propaganda reduce the probability of popular protest in Africa’s contemporary autocracies? To answer this question, we draw on an original dataset of state-run newspapers from 21 African countries, encompassing two languages and roughly 600,000 articles. We find that propaganda diminishes the probability of protest, and that its effects persist over time. By increasing the level of pro-regime propaganda by one standard deviation, autocrats have reduced the probability of protest the following day by 8%. The half-life of this effect is between 4 and 12 days, and between 10% and 20% of the initial effect persists after one month. This temporal persistence is remarkably consistent with campaign advertisements in democracies.
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