Hard and Soft Propaganda: Marketing Autocracy in Contemporary China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Current scholarship has identified distinct styles of propaganda produced by the Chinese government. Huang (2015) describes “hard” propaganda as propaganda designed to signal state capacity rather than persuade; by contrast, Yang (2013) illustrates how “soft” propaganda advances narratives of everyday heroism to deflect from structural critique. However, literature on hard and soft propaganda remains bifurcated, even as both styles rapidly alternate in the Chinese information environment. My thesis offers the first empirical study of hard and soft propaganda, investigating whether distinct styles of propaganda produce different effects, whether propaganda variants interact with one another, and how this might contribute to autocratic resilience. I conduct an original survey experiment with over 650 mainland Chinese participants, who are treated with hard and/or soft propaganda based on the Three Child Policy. I find that citizens are significantly more likely to share and enjoy soft propaganda, and less likely to identify it as “political propaganda” in comparison to hard propaganda. Both hard and soft propaganda encourage citizens to seek redress through official channels, while soft propaganda also stirs an entrepreneurial response. Though hard and soft propaganda create political backlash, exposure to both varieties also makes it more difficult for participants to identify soft propaganda as political propaganda, and easier for participants to identify hard propaganda as political propaganda. I conclude that hard and soft propaganda result in distinct effects, and that a diverse informational strategy may reinforce autocracy over time.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 23, 2022 |
| Publication date | May 23, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Du, Sharon |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Pan, Jennifer |
Subjects
| Subject | Propaganda |
|---|---|
| Subject | Propaganda, Chinese |
| Subject | China |
| Subject | Three Child Policy |
| Subject | One Child Policy |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- This document has been removed from online delivery at the request of the author.
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Du, S. (2022). Hard and Soft Propaganda: Marketing Autocracy in Contemporary China. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/dr256qn8279
Collection
Stanford University, Program in International Relations, Honors Theses
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