When Grapevine News Meets Mass Media

• Date: 01 August 2013
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414012463886
• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Subject Matter: Articles

Comparative Political Studies

46(8) 920 –946

© The Author(s) 2012

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414012463886

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463886CPS46810.1177/0010414012463

886Comparative Political StudiesZhu et al.

© The Author(s) 2011

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1University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

2American University, Washington, DC, USA

3Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jiangnan Zhu, Department of Politics and Public Administration, Faculty of Social Sciences,

University of Hong Kong, Room 933, 9/F, The Jockey Club Tower, Pokfulam Road, Hong

Kong.

Email: zhujn@hku.hk

When Grapevine News

Meets Mass Media:

Different Information

Sources and Popular

Perceptions of

Government

Corruption in

Mainland China

Jiangnan Zhu1, Jie Lu2, and Tianjian Shi3

Abstract

This article examines factors that shape people’s perceptions of government

corruption in mainland China. We are particularly interested in how people

acquire information on local corruption, given the general lack of pertinent first-

hand experience. We combine data from a national survey in mainland China

with a compiled data set on the number of local corruption cases reported in

Chinese local newspapers. The results of both probit and Heckman selection

models show that indirect formal and indirect informal information sources have

diverging effects. Although coverage of corruption by newspapers controlled by

the authoritarian regime reduces people’s perceptions of corruption, exposure

to grapevine news significantly increases perceived corruption. Moreover, access

to government-controlled media can significantly dilute the negative impact of

grapevine news on popular perceptions of corruption.

Article

Zhu et al. 921

Keywords

corruption, perception, media, grapevine, China

Corruption by government officials violates the social contract between ordi-

nary people and the government. Perceived government corruption diminishes

the legitimacy of the political system and reduces people’s trust in the govern-

ment. Corruption’s erosive effect on government legitimacy and political trust

has been a problem for many countries, including trilateral democracies, new

democracies in Latin America, and both democratic and authoritarian coun-

tries in East Asia (e.g., Anderson & Tverdova, 2003; Chang & Chu, 2006;

Della Porta, 2000; Pharr & Putnam, 2000; Seligson, 2002). Moreover, when

corruption is perceived to be widespread and common, such popular beliefs

may contribute to sustaining corruption in a society (e.g., Manion, 2004).

In reality, however, only a small number of people have personally expe-

rienced the corruption of government officials. This is true not only for peo-

ple in Europe and North America, where corruption is widely acknowledged

as limited in scope, but also for those in societies where corruption is consid-

ered to be common, like many Latin American, East European, and East

Asian countries. Research in Mexico (Bailey & Paras, 2006) and Russia

(Sharafutdinova, 2010), as well as our own survey conducted in mainland

China in 2002, reveals that the large majority of people do not have personal

experiences of corruption. Such a situation raises critical and theoretically

important questions: If people themselves do not have experiences of corrup-

tion, how do they acquire such perceptions? Why do some people perceive

their government to be more seriously corrupt than others? Theoretically,

understanding how people’s perceptions of government corruption are for-

mulated can help us identify cognitive mechanisms that contribute to the

regime legitimacy crisis witnessed by numerous societies (e.g., Booth &

Seligson, 2009) and further clarify the possible role of this popular belief in

the vicious circle of corruption intensification.

We argue that in many cases, people’s perceptions of government corrup-

tion are based on indirect information from various sources, including formal

channels such as the mass media and informal ones such as rumors. And

informal information sources are of particular salience in shaping such per-

ceptions in societies such as Russia and mainland China, where the mass

media have been controlled to various extents by their respective govern-

ments. Living in societies without a guaranteed free flow of information,

people tend to seek information from unofficial sources such as grapevine

rumors and gossip. Moreover, such unofficial sources often provide people