How Soft Propaganda Persuades

• Author: Daniel C. Mattingly,Elaine Yao
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211047403
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2022, Vol. 55(9) 1569–1594

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140211047403

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How Soft Propaganda

Persuades

Daniel C. Mattingly

1,

*and Elaine Yao

2,

*

Abstract

An inf‌luential body of scholarship argues that authoritarian regimes design

“hard”propaganda that is intentionally heavy-handed in order to signal regime

power. In this study, by contrast, we link the power of propaganda to the

emotional power of “soft”propaganda such as television dramas and viral

social media content. We conduct a series of experiments in which we expose

over 6800 respondents in China to real propaganda videos drawn from

television dramas, state-backed social media accounts, and state-run news-

casts, each containing nationalist messages favored by the Chinese Com-

munist Party. In contrast to theories that propaganda is unpersuasive, we

show that propaganda effectively manipulates anger as well as anti-foreign

sentiment and behavior, with heightened anti-foreign attitudes persisting up to

a week. However, we also f‌ind that nationalist propaganda has no effect on

perceptions of Chinese government performance or on self-reported will-

ingness to protest against the state.

Keywords

authoritarian regimes, propaganda, emotions, nationalism, China

1

Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

2

Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

*Both authors contributed equally and names are listed alphabetically.

Corresponding Author:

Daniel C. Mattingly, Department of Political Science, Yale University, 115 Prospect Street, New

Haven, CT 06520-8301, USA.

Email: daniel.mattingly@yale.edu

Introduction

Authoritarian regimes spend billions of dollars every year on propaganda.

Recent scholarship suggests that the aim of much propaganda is not to

persuade, but rather to intimidate citizens into compliance. State-run media in

China, Russia, and Syria heaps praise on ruling parties, makes exaggerated

claims about the process of leaders, and presents blatantly distorted infor-

mation. The style of this “hard”propaganda is often stodgy, didactic, and

wooden. Rather than being credible and convincing, hard propaganda shows

how authoritarian states are able to monopolize public discourse and signals

the state’s far-reaching coercive power (Carter & Carter, 2021b;Huang, 2015,

2018;Little, 2017;Wedeen, 1999).

Nonetheless, increasingly large portions of authoritarian regimes’pro-

paganda budgets are being dedicated towards producing what might be

called “soft”propaganda, including movies, documentaries, soap operas,

artistic performances, and viral social media content. These forms of pro-

paganda occupy an important niche in the information ecosystem of several

regimes, particularly China.

1

Soft propaganda is typically disseminated in

slickly produced and entertaining media, and makes relatively credible

claims, at least compared to the over-the-top claims that are characteristic of

hard propaganda. However, it remains unclear whether soft propaganda is

also effective at persuading citizens and changing political attitudes and

behaviors.

To investigate the role of soft propaganda, we conducted a series of ex-

periments in which we exposed over 6800 respondents in China to real

propaganda videos drawn from state-run newscasts, state-approved television

dramas, and state-backed social media accounts. Each video we selected had

been viewed hundreds of thousands or millions of times and contained the

nationalist messages favored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). We

selected treatments that encompass a variety of primarily “soft”messaging

strategies and focused on themes that highlighted foreign violations of

Chinese national sovereignty.

Our experiments show that each of the widely viewed propaganda videos

we tested were highly effective at manipulating emotions and had a durable

effect on nationalist attitudes. While recent studies suggest that CCP pro-

paganda does not effectively strengthen nationalism (Cantoni et al., 2017;

Huang, 2018), we show that the most emotionally rousing soft propaganda has

long-lasting effects on nationalist political attitudes. Viewing nationalist soft

propaganda videos increased anti-foreign sentiment both in surveys con-

ducted immediately after exposure and in a follow-up survey 5 to 7 days later.

Exposure to propaganda also made respondents more likely to sign a petition

calling on Japan to apologize for its actions during the Second World War.

1570 Comparative Political Studies 55(9)