Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Foundations
- 1 Persuasion and Domination
- 2 A Theory of Autocratic Propaganda
- 3 A Global Dataset of Autocratic Propaganda
- Part II The Political Origins of Propaganda Strategies
- 4 The Politics of Pro-regime Propaganda
- 5 Narrating the Domestic
- 6 Narrating the World
- 7 Threatening Citizens with Repression
- Part III The Propaganda Calendar
- 8 The Propagandist’s Dilemma
- 9 Memory and Forgetting
- Part IV Propaganda, Protest, and the Future
- 10 Propaganda and Protest
- 11 Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Other books in the series
5 - Narrating the Domestic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Foundations
- 1 Persuasion and Domination
- 2 A Theory of Autocratic Propaganda
- 3 A Global Dataset of Autocratic Propaganda
- Part II The Political Origins of Propaganda Strategies
- 4 The Politics of Pro-regime Propaganda
- 5 Narrating the Domestic
- 6 Narrating the World
- 7 Threatening Citizens with Repression
- Part III The Propaganda Calendar
- 8 The Propagandist’s Dilemma
- 9 Memory and Forgetting
- Part IV Propaganda, Protest, and the Future
- 10 Propaganda and Protest
- 11 Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Other books in the series
Summary
Propaganda entails narratives: topics covered, omitted, and the account of current events that constitutes history’s first draft. This chapter focuses on domestic narratives. Three issue areas are most salient: the economy and public goods provision, politics, and sports. To capture narrative subtleties, we adapt a measure of semantic distinctiveness from computational linguistics. Where autocrats confront no electoral constraints, we find, their propaganda apparatuses trumpet their democratic credentials, yet omit the stuff of democracy, like electoral campaigns and the opposition. They cover a general, unnamed “opposition” rather than the actual opposition, which would undermine absurd claims of universal support and help citizens coordinate around protest leaders. We observe none of these tactics where autocrats confront electoral constraints, but neither do we observe them systematically denigrating their opposition rivals, since doing so would undermine credibility. Constrained autocrats acknowledge policy failures: fuel crises, vaccine shortages, and persistently high infant mortality. They acknowledge that the government has failed to adequately invest in national sports.
Keywords
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- Propaganda in AutocraciesInstitutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief, pp. 173 - 227Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023