Research
Working Papers
- Deng, Rex Weiye. Negative Propaganda and Regime Evaluations: Evidence from China. Revise and Resubmit.
Abstract
Authoritarian regimes often regard negative propaganda against Western democracies as a strategy to enhance their own legitimacy. Yet, we know little about its prevalence and efficacy. I argue that negative propaganda likely reduces evaluation of Western democracies because of its seemingly credible content and potentially fear-inducing information. However, it does not necessarily improve evaluation of the domestic regime. By analyzing over 900,000 Weibo posts from Chinese state-affiliated media, I show that negative coverage of Western countries has been increasingly prevalent. Meanwhile, such content appears credible and fear-inducing. With an original, pre-registered survey experiment in China, I show that negative propaganda significantly lowers evaluations of the Western democratic regime, but it does not significantly improve evaluations of the domestic regime. Further analyses suggest that both information and fear are plausible mechanisms. These results broaden the understanding of propaganda and its impact, and how authoritarian regimes survive in a changing information environment.- Deng, Rex Weiye. Screened Realities: How Entertainment Fosters Political Compliance in China. Working Paper.
Abstract
Existing research suggests that autocrats face a dilemma: manipulating negative information about regime performance can cause public backlash, but revealing such information can make the regime look incompetent and unaccountable. I argue that, to solve this dilemma, autocrats rely on the entertainment media, where problems get revealed not in isolation but as part of a dramatized narrative that highlights the regime’s efforts to address them. Since such “problem-revealing entertainment” is thought-provoking and immersive, it has the potential to positively affect people’s evaluations of the regime. With a wide array of observational and experimental evidence, I demonstrate that (1) the Chinese regime has systematically generated entertainment products that disclose details of corruption while stressing its efforts to tackle it, and (2) these products enhance citizens’ perceptions of the regime’s competence and accountability because of their thought-provoking and immersive content. These findings broaden our understanding of how information manipulation through entertainment media affects authoritarian resilience and survival.- Carter, David, B. and Rex Weiye Deng. Does State-Led Development in Once Hard-to-Reach Places Cultivate Political Trust? Working Paper.
Abstract
The conventional view suggests that increased state presence in historically rugged and remote regions may face local resistance, as residents in these areas are often hostile toward the central government. However, we argue that individuals in these regions respond positively to contemporary state presence, particularly through infrastructural development, by exhibiting higher levels of trust than those in core areas. Two mechanisms explain this relationship: infrastructural development delivers more noticeable benefits to citizens in peripheral regions, and residents in rugged areas have had limited interactions with contemporary governments, making their political attitudes more malleable. We also highlight two important scope conditions of this relationship -- conflict history and resource extraction. Using geo-spatial data on terrain ruggedness, contemporary infrastructure, and individual-level surveys across three continents, we find evidence supporting our hypotheses. These findings underscore the strengths and limitations of infrastructural development as a crucial form of state presence in bolstering political control.Charaniya, Amaan, Rex Weiye Deng, Dahjin Kim, Gechun Lin, William Nomikos, and ˙Ipek Ece S¸ener.Can Leaders Shape Public Opinion During a Foreign Policy Crisis? Evidcence from U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Working Paper.
- Best Foreign Policy Paper Award, APSA (2022)
Abstract
The general public greeted news of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending a two-decade long operation, with mixed reactions. In this paper, we describe the real-time reactions to the American withdrawal on Twitter. We trace and describe online discussions specifically about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by collecting a unique dataset of 7 million tweets. Instead of relying on a pre-determined group of users, we collect all tweets in the United States sent between August and September of 2021 that mention a list of keywords related to the withdrawal. This approach allows us to collect a comprehensive corpus of tweets related to the Afghan withdrawal. We then apply a semi-supervised machine learning algorithm to measure sentiment toward both the Trump administration, which began the withdrawal, and the Biden administration, which concluded it. We find that social media reactions to key events are rapid but transient. We observe no spikes but a steady increasing volume of negative Tweets after the United States completes the withdrawal process on August 31st.Work in Progress
Deng, Rex Weiye. Softening the Crisis: How Cultural Diplomacy Contributes to Interstate Reconciliations.
Deng, Rex Weiye, Taishi Muraoka, and Margit Tavits. Exploiting Extremism: Strategic Responses of Radical Right Parties to Right-Wing Violence in Europe.