Propaganda by Proxy: How Autocrats Use Surrogates to Conceal Their Control of the Media | APSA Preprint

Autocrats use the media to generate popular support, yet individuals opposed to the regime tend to distrust and avoid state-owned sources. How do autocrats reach these skeptical actors? In this paper, I examine a strategy in which autocrats control private media outlets through proxies, thereby concealing these outlets' connections to the government and rendering them more credible to regime opponents. Fielding surveys in four Sub-Saharan African countries (N = 4,761), I find that the vast majority of citizens living in autocracies are unable to identify which private outlets are owned by regime proxies. I then present evidence from a series of field experiments (N = 1,898) showing that concealed ownership works: it makes opponents more likely to consume regime-controlled news sources and more likely to be persuaded by their pro-regime coverage. These results challenge the notion that propaganda only influences an autocrat's loyal supporters, pointing to conditions under which it reaches and persuades more discerning audiences.

Media Access and Public Opinion in Autocracies: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Tanzania

How does media access shape public opinion in autocracies? I explore this question using a field experiment in Tanzania in which participants were randomly assigned one month of free access to 30 print newspapers via a mobile app. The intervention led to a 52 percentage point increase in newspaper readership, with most users choosing to consume independent over state-owned sources. In an endline survey, treated respondents scored significantly higher on a political knowledge index, yet also expressed more favorable attitudes toward the regime, including endorsing the government's planned election reforms and approving of its response to nationwide flooding. I test several explanations for why a media diet composed mostly of independent news aligned citizens' views with those of the regime. While independent newspapers are more critical of the regime than state-owned outlets, I show that they are less adversarial than many online sources — likely due to their greater vulnerability to government repression. As a result, exposure to independent newspapers improved perceptions of the regime among respondents accustomed to consuming online news. The findings suggest conditions under which expanded access to independent media may paradoxically bolster support for autocratic regimes. 

Supported by a generous grant from the The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab's (J-PAL) Governance Initiative (GI). 

The Effects of Independent Local Radio on Tanzanian Public Opinion: Evidence from a Planned Natural Experiment (Journal of Politics, 2023) | paper | replication materials | pre-analysis plan | blog 

We describe a natural experiment occasioned by an abrupt increase in the transmission range of an independent Tanzanian radio station whose broadcasts emphasize current affairs and gender equality. Some villages that formerly lay outside the catchment area of this radio station could now receive it, while nearby villages remained outside of reception range. Prior to the change in transmitter range in 2018, we conducted a baseline survey in both treated and untreated villages and found them to be similar in terms of prevailing social attitudes and political interest. An endline survey conducted in 2020 shows that respondents in areas that received the new radio signal were substantially more likely to listen to the station, and their levels of political interest and knowledge about domestic politics were significantly higher than their counterparts in villages where the signal could not reach. Attitude change on a range of gender issues, however, was sporadic.

Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, Constantine Manda, Beatrice Montano, and Bardia Rahmani

Supported by a generous grant from the Wellspring Foundation. 

A Radio Drama’s Effects on Attitudes Toward Early and Forced Marriage: Results from a Field Experiment in Rural Tanzania (Comparative Political Studies, 2022)  paper | pre-analysis plan | replication materials | project website

Early and forced marriage (EFM) is an increasing focus of international organizations and local non-government organizations. This study assesses the extent to which attitudes and norms related to EFM can be changed by locally tailored media campaigns. A two-hour radio drama set in rural Tanzania was presented to Tanzanian villagers as part of a placebo controlled experiment randomized at the village level. A random sample of 1,200 villagers was interviewed at baseline and invited to a presentation of the radio drama, 83% of whom attended. 95% of baseline respondents were reinterviewed two weeks later, and 97% fifteen months after that. The radio drama produced sizable and statistically significant effects on attitudes and perceived norms concerning forced marriage, which was the focus of the radio drama, as well as more general attitudes about gender equality. Fifteen months later, treatment effects diminished, but we continue to see evidence of EFM-related attitude change. 

Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, Constantine Manda, Beatrice Montano, and Bardia Rahmani

Supported by a generous grant from the Wellspring Foundation. 

The Persuasive Effects of Narrative Entertainment: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Experiments

Narrative entertainment has attracted increasing attention from social scientists and policymakers. One strand of research seeks to understand whether the entertainment that audiences consume in everyday life has incidental effects on their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors; another, whether purpose-built narrative media campaigns hold promise as a means of addressing a wide array of social, economic, and political problems. Building on previous literature reviews, we present results from a meta-analysis of 81 experiments that assess the persuasive effects of narrative radio, TV, and film programs, including a recent wave of studies in low- and middle-income countries. We apply a random-effects model to a diverse set of studies evaluating narrative media effects across a range of settings and issue domains. The results suggest that narrative entertainment, on average, is quite influential, with sizable persuasive effects that remain apparent weeks to months after initial exposure. A smaller literature reports head-to-head tests of the relative effectiveness of narrative versus non-narrative messages; although inconclusive, the evidence suggests that narrative messages may be only slightly more persuasive than non-narrative messages. If true, this finding would imply that the main advantage of narratives may be their ability to attract and engage large audiences. We conclude by calling attention to gaps in the literature and proposing avenues for further research.

Bardia Rahmani, Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, and Beatrice Montano

Radio Dramas Can Build Political Support for Environmental Protection: Experimental Evidence from Rural Tanzania

Can media campaigns mobilize Africans to take political action on environmental issues? We report the results of a placebo-controlled experiment conducted in rural Tanzania in which 1,360 respondents from 34 villages were randomly assigned to attend a screening of a radio drama designed to generate political support for conservationism. The drama depicts a corrupt bargain between a business developer and a public official to exploit the natural resources of a local village; the hero of the story rallies voters to reject the deal in favor of environmental preservation. Outcomes were assessed through a survey conducted four weeks later. Participants who were randomly exposed to the drama became more knowledgeable about climate change, more likely to cite environmental protection as a political priority, and more supportive of pro-environmental policies and candidates. A year later, treatment effects remain detectable for certain measures but decay for others, highlighting the importance of sustained messaging. 

Bardia Rahmani, Dylan W. Groves, Beatrice Montano, and Donald P. Green, Beatrice Montano

Narrative Entertainment Shapes Policy Priorities: Evidence from Four Field Experiments in Tanzania (under review)

A growing body of work finds that entertainment-education interventions can influence attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, but few studies consider their effects on audiences' policy priorities. We present results from a series of experiments conducted in Tanzania that estimate the impact of four radio dramas on audiences' prioritization of environmental protection, countering gender-based violence, reducing early and forced marriage, and improving access to HIV treatment. Interviewing listeners weeks after they were exposed to the drama, we measure their policy priorities in two ways.  First, we use a conjoint experiment to assess listeners' propensity to vote for hypothetical candidates running on different policy platforms, some of which coincide with the theme of the audio drama.  Second, we present listeners with a small set of cards, each of which represents a possible village goal (or problem), and invite them to sort the cards in order of their importance.  Three of the four dramas significantly increased listeners’ preference for hypothetical candidates promising to address the issue featured in the drama, and all four dramas elevated the perception that the issue represents a top priority for the community. Pooling across studies (N = 4,464), the average treatment effects of narrative messages on voting and prioritization are substantial and statistically significant. We use machine learning methods to investigate whether people with various background attributes -- age, education, gender, religion, and exposure to mass media -- respond differently to the dramas. Perhaps surprisingly, we find sizable effects of similar magnitude across an array of different respondent profiles. The results suggest that, like news from credible sources, narrative entertainment can influence which issues audiences take to be important.

Salma Emmanuel, Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves,  Constantine Manda, Beatrice Montano, Bardia Rahmani

Supported by a generous grant from the Wellspring Foundation. 

Religious Elites and Women's Political Participation: Experimental Evidence from Rural Tanzania

Can religious leaders use their standing to promote women's political participation (WPP) in the developing world? We present the results of experiments conducted in northeastern Tanzania that estimate the effect of a pro-WPP audio message from a progressive religious elite on behavioral intentions, attitudes, and norms relating to female office-seeking. Across two studies (N = 4,701), we find that the progressive religious elite's message makes villagers more likely on average to say they would encourage their daughter or niece to run for political office. These effects on behavioral intentions persisted a month later. Moreover, we find suggestive evidence that the children of respondents who received the progressive elite's message became more interested in running for political office. By contrast, we find muted or inconsistent effects of the progressive message on attitudes and norms, and of conservative messages on all three outcomes. The results suggest that interventions that leverage local religious elites can effectively reduce familial gatekeeping of women's political participation in socially conservative communities.

Bardia Rahmani, Dylan W. Groves, Beatrice Montano, and Francis Ngatigwa

The Effects of Mass Media on Political and Social Attitudes: Evidence from a Radio Distribution Experiment in Tanzania

For nearly a century, scholars have studied the ways in which exposure to mass communication influences social and political attitudes. Although experimental studies abound, they primarily focus on how exposure to a particular program or channel affects what audiences think; rarely have experiments randomly provided the means to consume a particular type of mass media. The present study reports the results of two experiments in rural Tanzania in which villagers were randomly assigned to receive radios and were reinterviewed approximately 15-20 months later.  Although the treatment group, as expected, became much more likely to listen to radio than the control group, the downstream effects on political and social attitudes are mixed. We find no appreciable effects on political participation or interest in politics, but we do see gains in knowledge about current events and increased concern about crime.  Attitudes about gender equality tend to move in the more progressive direction, and those who received radios also tend to become more accepting of stigmatized groups.  Those in the treatment group came to rate the ruling party more favorably, perhaps reflecting the political capture of nominally independent radio stations in the region, but these effects are not large and do not apply to ratings of the current president.

Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, Beatrice Montano, and Bardia Rahmani

Can a Radio Drama Influence Awareness, Prioritization, and Willingness to Respond to Gender Based Violence? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Tanzania

Can edutainment sensitize listeners to the problem of gender-based violence (GBV) and build support for a collective response? While a robust literature focuses on the incidence of intimate partner violence in Sub-Saharan Africa, few studies consider the broader range of threats that women experience in public settings, such as harassment, sexual assault, and sexual violence. We study how edutainment shapes awareness, policy priorities, and preferred responses to these aspects of GBV through a placebo-controlled experiment randomized at the village level in rural Tanzania. A random sample of 1,250 villagers was interviewed at baseline and invited to one of two randomly assigned radio drama screenings, then interviewed again one month later.  The 90-minute radio drama that focuses on GBV both raises awareness about the risks women face in their daily lives and increases the importance that audiences accord to sexual violence as a community problem. Narrative mass media offers an effective and scalable means for spurring collective action responses to threats to women's safety in public spaces.

Beatrice Montano, Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, and Bardia Rahmani

Supported by a generous grant from the Wellspring Foundation. 

The Persuasive Power of Supreme Courts: Evidence from Tanzania

Do constitutional court rulings shape social attitudes and perceived social norms? Rigorous evidence from outside of industrialized democracies is scarce. This paper evaluates the influence of a recent ruling by Tanzania's supreme court which held that laws permitting marriage for girls under the age of 18 are unconstitutional. We randomly assigned 1,950 respondents in rural Tanzania to hear a radio report about the ruling or to a control condition. Respondents who heard the report were 8 percentage points more likely to reject all forms of early marriage and 5.4 percentage points more likely to say they would report early marriage to authorities. However hearing the report did not influence perceptions of community norms or willingness to speak out against early marriage, and the persuasive effect of the report was attenuated when presented alongside a countervailing signal from Tanzania's Attorney General.

Salma Emmanuel, Dylan W. Groves, Constantine Manda, Donald P. Green, Beatrice Montano, Bardia Rahmani

Can Media Campaigns Increase Female Voter Turnout in Africa? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

Efforts to increase women's political participation in the developing world often face challenges of high costs, limited scalability, and difficulty reaching politically disengaged populations. This paper tests the effect of a mass media campaign that employs entertainment principles to capture the attention of women living in rural Tanzania and encourage them to vote in local elections. We developed a six-episode Swahili-language radio drama that portrays women from socially conservative communities participating effectively in politics and randomized radio stations to air the series in the months leading up to the November 2024 Tanzanian local elections. We assess outcomes in two ways: first, by comparing turnout in treated and untreated areas, and second, by conducting a post-election SMS survey of voting-age women. Our large sample size and naturalistic design allow us to precisely estimate the causal effects of entertainment-based female voter mobilization campaigns with a high degree of ecological and internal validity.

with Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, and Beatrice Montano (Intervention ongoing)

How Citizens Respond to Media Crackdowns: Evidence from a Unique Dataset of 7.5 Million Tanzanians

Authoritarian governments often shut down media outlets whose coverage is overly critical of the regime, yet how citizens respond is poorly understood. Citizens might migrate to other critical sources, mitigating the effects of repression; they might switch to government-aligned sources, rendering repression effective; or they might decrease their news consumption altogether. I explore these possibilities using a unique longitudinal dataset of 7.5 million Tanzanians' media habits over a ten-year period. Employing a difference-in-difference design, I estimate the causal effect of media shutdowns on Tanzanians' consumption choices. I draw upon a second dataset evaluating the ideological slant of Tanzanian media outlets to determine whether citizens replace shut-down outlets with more or less critical sources. Finally, I explore whether certain kinds of citizens are more likely to seek out critical alternatives than others. The results shed light on whether and when government repression succeeds in limiting citizens' exposure to anti-regime content.

Household and Community Spillover Effects of Persuasive Messaging: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

with Donald P. Green, Dylan W. Groves, and Beatrice Montano (Analysis complete)

A selection of my reporting over the years:

"Timor-Leste's New Kingmakers." Cover story for The Diplomat (June 2020) | link

"The Looting of Timor-Leste's Oil Wealth." Cover story for The Diplomat (June 2019) | link 

"How the War on Drugs Is Making Tajikistan More Authoritarian." The Diplomat (July 2018) | link

"A Luta Continua: LGBTI Rights in Timor-Leste." Cover story for The Diplomat (September 2018) | link

"The Battle for the Afghan Border." The Diplomat (August 2017) | link