@article{7772241471ce444db037ec5877717569,
title = "How autocrats manipulate economic news: Evidence from Russia{\textquoteright}s state-controlled television",
abstract = "Conventional wisdom says that autocrats manipulate news through censorship. But when it comes to economic affairs—a highly sensitive topic for modern autocrats—the government{\textquoteright}s ability to censor information effectively is limited, because citizens can benchmark the official news against their incomes, market prices, and other observables. We propose that instead of censoring economic facts, the media tactically frames those facts to make the government appear as a competent manager. Using a corpus of daily news reports from Russia{\textquoteright}s largest state-owned television network, we document extensive evidence supporting this prediction. Bad news is not censored, but it is systematically blamed on external factors, whereas good news is systematically attributed to domestic politicians. Such selective attribution is used more intensely in politically sensitive times (elections and protests) and when the leadership is already enjoying high popular support—consistent with the existing theories of information manipulation.",
author = "Arturas Rozenas and Denis Stukal",
note = "Funding Information: For financial support, we are grateful to the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University. Data and supporting materials necessary to reproduce the numerical results in the article are available in the JOP Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/jop). An online appendix with supplementary material is available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1086/703208. Funding Information: For financial support, we are grateful to the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University.. We are very grateful to Georgy Egorov, Scott Gehlbach, Jason Guo, Chistopher Li, Nikolay Marinov, Margaret Roberts, Sergey Sanovich, Maria Snegovaya, Alessandro Vec-chiato, seminar participants at University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford University, Harriman Institute at Columbia University, Rice University, and Yale University, as well as three anonymous reviewers. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.",
year = "2019",
month = jul,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1086/703208",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "81",
pages = "982--996",
journal = "Journal of Politics",
issn = "0022-3816",
publisher = "Cambridge University Press",
number = "3",
}