Foreign Anti-Mainstream Propaganda and Democratic Publics

• Author: Matthias Mader,Nikolay Marinov,Harald Schoen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211060277
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2022, Vol. 55(10) 1732–1764

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140211060277

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Foreign

Anti-Mainstream

Propaganda and

Democratic Publics

Matthias Mader

1

, Nikolay Marinov

2

and

Harald Schoen

3

Abstract

Illiberal regimes use overt and covert political communication to influence

public opinion in democracies. We present an argument about how such

propaganda impacts targeted publics. We posit that effectiveness depends on

whether the source of the message is revealed, on the nature of the issue, and

on individual characteristics of the recipients. We test these propositions in

Germany, in the context of Kremlin messaging, using eight survey experi-

ments administered to a large sample of German voters (n= 2, 303). Citizens

who mistrust the government, believe in conspiracy theories, or are generally

disconnected from politics are vulnerable to propaganda warfare that involves

anti-mainstream messaging, while the rest of the populace is not. At the same

time, providing a pro-Western, mainstream viewpoint and outing the Russian

source are not generally effective countermeasures. We discuss the impli-

cations of illiberal regime communication for information wars between

states and for the internal workings of democratic politics.*

1

University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

2

University of Houston College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Houston, TX, USA

3

Universit¨

at Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Nikolay Marinov, Department of Political Science, University of Houston College of Liberal

Arts and Social Sciences, 3551 Cullen Boulevard, Houston, TX 77204-3000, USA.

Email: nmarinov@uh.edu

Keywords

elections, public opinion, voting behavior, political regimes

Introduction

Illiberal regimes use political communication to influence publics in de-

mocracies. This communication becomes a part of what Bennett and

Livingston (2018) have called the “disinformation order.”The disinforma-

tion order characterizes not merely misleading political communication in

democracies but also an entire ecology of pre-existing attitudes toward

government, science, and democracy, represented by political movements and

media channels.

Weextend the study of the disinformation order by focusing on the political

communication illiberal regimes aim at democracies (Snegovaya, 2021;

Snegovaya & Watanabe, 2021). We begin by clarifying the nature of the

directed political communication in such cases. When illiberal regimes face

persistent clashes with a democratic polity, propaganda blends issue-specific

objectives with general anti-democratic rhetoric. This means that alleged

specific policy failures of the liberal-democratic state are linked to or viewed

through the prism of a general failure of the liberal-democratic state to govern.

The ensuing attack becomes an attack on the establishment, or on all

mainstream parties (Lewandowsky et al., 2017). We use this observation to

provide a theoretical argument explaining who is influenced by this anti-

mainstream narrative in democracies, on which issues, and how revealing the

source of the criticism impacts its persuasive power.

Starting with issue areas, we argue that messaging impacts opinions more

strongly in the foreign policy realm compared to issues that concern de-

mocracy’s domestic politics. Domestic publics are more dependent on in-

formation from the media where foreign policy issues are concerned, and

coverage of these issues is generally less intense (Baum & Potter, 2015;

Guisinger & Saunders, 2017); in a sense, one might say that a look at any

newspaper or newscast (aside from special cases), lends support to this.

Hence, foreign messaging might have a larger chance of impacting opinions

there than in the domestic domain, where more direct experiences with the

subject matter are possible and the number of domestic sources of information

more numerous.

A large body of research on disinformation looks at the effect of making the

source of the message explicit (e.g., Flanagin & Metzger, 2014;Nassetta &

Gross, 2020). We build on existing literature by positing that we would expect

the sourcing of the information to a sender to strengthen its impact if citizens

hold positive attitudes toward the sender (Pornpitakpan, 2004). As an ex-

tension, we suggest that this might be true only in the foreign policy domain,

Mader et al. 1733

however, where foreign elites are perceived as legitimate stakeholders in

policy debates. On domestic issues, by contrast, revealing a foreign source

might weaken the power of a message irrespective of attitudes toward the

source because foreigners have no legitimacy to weigh in on a country’s

sovereign affairs.

Turning to who, among the public, will be influenced by such messages, we

posit that those who are estranged from today’s liberal democracies are the

audience most likely to be affected. This group includes both people who are

malcontent with democratic politics and those who are (merely) disconnected

from it. Citizens with authoritarian leanings will find a message suggesting

that democratic institutions deliver questionable policies naturally congruent.

Conspiratorially minded respondents will have an easier time believing that

widely accepted accounts of political developments in their country are

suspect, which also implies that things are not working out as they should. The

ill-informed will not have the resources to defend themselves against im-

probable claims. Put differently, people at the fringes of the domestic political

order may be particularly susceptible to a “disinformation order”(Bennett &

Livingston, 2018). On the flip side, informed citizens and those who reject

conspiracy theories or authoritarian ideas might be largely immune to illiberal

propaganda.

To study the impact of illiberal regime propaganda, we analyze the case of

the Kremlin’s political messaging in Germany. We embed eight survey ex-

periments in a large representative survey of the German public (n= 2303).

For a range of current foreign and domestic issues, we randomly confront

respondents with either a pro-Kremlin, anti-mainstream frame, or a main-

stream frame that reproduces widely shared views of Western political actors

and of the independent media. Including the mainstream account of political

developments has the advantage of testing the flip side of our arguments, to

see whether the malcontent and the disconnected react differently to the two

types of messages, respectively, than respondents who do not share these

characteristics. In addition, we randomly vary whether the frames are at-

tributed to the respective source or whether the source is undisclosed.

Our findings largely support the hypotheses. The effect sizes are small,

however, and there are some interesting deviations from our expecta-

tions. Different levels of conspiracism and political knowledge play the

strongest role in accounting for differences in the effectiveness of foreign

anti-mainstream propaganda and mainstream messaging, respectively.

Surprisingly, sourcing the information plays a relatively modest role.

There is evidence that foreigners have a harder time changing opinions on

domestic issues, as expected.

A key implication is particularly troubling. Our findings suggest that il-

liberal propaganda may polarize the public in liberal democracies. On the

issues we study, narratives and counter-narratives move estranged and

1734 Comparative Political Studies 55(10)