Current Research

Working Papers

• Still Watching, Less Persuaded: Attention to News Reduces Authoritarian Propaganda Effectiveness
  With Georgiy Syunyaev
  Current version
  State propaganda in autocracies often creates information bubbles, leaving citizens unwilling or unable to switch to alternative sources. This study shows that propaganda's sway can be decreased even without escaping such bubbles. In a panel experiment with 1,176 Russian citizens, we randomly assigned participants to analyze the reporting patterns of (i) propagandistic state-owned TV content only or (ii) both state-owned and balanced non-governmental TV content over four weeks. Two weeks after the intervention, both treatments reduced support for the authoritarian regime but did not undermine trust in or exposure to state media. Exploiting the differences in news channel composition across treatments, we find support for two mechanisms explaining these effects: increased attention to familiar media content and increased consumption of news from non-government sources. Subgroup analyses show that these mechanisms operate primarily among citizens who already exhibit skepticism toward the regime and propaganda.
• Borrowed Authority: Expert Messengers and the Credibility of Foreign Propaganda Narratives
  Foreign propaganda increasingly penetrates democratic discourse through domestic intermediaries. This study examines whether expert attribution enhances the credibility of authoritarian messaging and whether fact-based corrections can offset such credibility gains. In a survey experiment with 1,267 U.S. residents, I randomly varied whether statements echoing Russian propaganda about Ukraine were attributed to prominent American experts and whether these statements were accompanied by corrections. Results show that attribution to a renowned political scientist substantially increased statement credibility among Republicans, while attribution to a government official had no effect. However, factual corrections consistently reduced propaganda credibility regardless of source attribution, offsetting expert credibility premiums. These findings illuminate a critical vulnerability in democratic discourse—the exploitation of expert authority to legitimize foreign narratives. At the same time, they highlight the weakness of such borrowed authority, as it can be effectively countered by evidence.
• What About Whataboutism?
  With Hannah Chapman
  Politicians frequently attempt to deflect criticism and responsibility for wrongdoing by raising irrelevant issues or counter-accusations. This practice, known as whataboutism, was a common Soviet propaganda tactic during the Cold War and has since become a widely used rhetorical strategy in contemporary political debates. But does this propaganda strategy influence political attitudes and, if so, how? This paper tests the impact of whataboutism by Russian authorities on political attitudes using original survey experiments of nationally representative populations in Russia. We investigate how reminders by Russian authorities of foreign countries' record on salient policy issues influence citizens' evaluation of both countries' record on the same issue. We hypothesize that such reminders will depress Russians' evaluations of the situation not only in the target country but in Russia as well, increasing overall cynicism about their own country's politics.
• Public Opinion on Social Media Moderation: Evidence From Four Countries
  With Yiming Wang, Mingcong Pan, and Yoshiko Herrera
  Political polarization is a pressing problem around the world and social media have come under scrutiny for their possible role in facilitating it. In democracies, some companies or governments restrict online expression or block access to certain platforms. In autocracies, digital restrictions are used widely to stem oppositional activity, often under the pretense of fighting extremism. Via a series of conjoint experiments in the U.S., China, Germany, and Brazil, we examine support for social media moderation and partisan disagreements about it. We offer important corrections to the existing studies of public opinion on social media: there is a broad cross-country consensus about restricting harmful online speech, and partisan disagreements about content moderation are weaker than some previous research suggests.
• Trust Building Across Identity Groups: An Experiment in Kazakhstan
  With Yoshiko Herrera, Andrew Kydd, and Evgeniia Mitrokhina
  Mistrust is a common cause of conflict between individuals belonging to different identity groups. When can such mistrust be overcome? We study this question using an experiment based on a trust game between members of different social identity groups. In particular, we study the effect of hearing about positive interactions across group lines on the willingness of individuals to take a chance on cooperating with outgroup members. We field the experiment in Kazakhstan, focusing on relations between Kazakhs and Russians.
• Combating Information Avoidance in Wartime Russia: A Multidisciplinary Field Experiment
  With Julia A. Minson, Aaron Erlich, Jordan Gans-Morse, Christopher Higgins, and others
  We report the results of two large-scale field experiments examining the effectiveness of email-based communication in the context of Russian information manipulation following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We contacted academics across the social sciences and asked them to produce messages to persuade Russian residents to watch a truthful video about the invasion. In partnership with the non-profit Mail2Ru, we randomly assigned eleven expert messages and two control treatments to approximately 260,000 email addresses. Only one message led to significantly greater engagement with the video relative to the control treatments, with 9 messages performing in line with the controls and one message underperforming them. We then successfully replicated the effectiveness of our top-performing intervention in a second experiment. Our work highlights the challenges associated with effective communication in the face of disinformation and government surveillance and point to the urgent need for experimental research in this area.