Media Effects Empirical Workshop (MEEW)

Preliminary Schedule:

10:00–10:30 Breakfast & Registration

10:30–11:20 Session I: Hannah Waight (U of Oregon Sociology), "Seeing the State: Media Manipulation (In)visibility in Chinese Newspapers"
Discussant: Erik Wang (NYU Political Science)

Under what circumstances can individuals living under authoritarian regimes identify media objects manipulated by the state? Authoritarian regimes today use more subtle forms of media control than the dictatorships of the 20th century. In the case of China, media commercialization has created a mixed environment where content placed by the state is distributed alongside commercially driven content. Whether or not individuals can discern state-planted news in mixed environments implies different possibilities for how such material affects consumers: demobilization effects, for example, require recognition of media control. Discernment, however, has not been subject to empirical test in the case of state propaganda. This paper employs two pre-registered online survey experiments to investigate under what circumstances Chinese respondents can distinguish newspaper articles placed by the state from those written by newspapers themselves. We focus on a particular type of state propaganda: scripting directives, internal instructions from Chinese state authorities to Chinese media organizations to reprint a prescribed script when reporting on a topic or event. In the first experiment we draw on a set of leaked scripting directives and show respondents scripted and non-scripted newspaper articles on the same news event. In this experiment we demonstrate that Chinese respondents can distinguish between scripted and non-scripted articles. In the second experiment we use a more representative set of scripted and non-scripted articles on similar topics. We replicate our first experiment and furthermore measure the content signals respondents use to discern scripted from non-scripted. Our paper brings the question of discernment and attention to the empirical study of authoritarian propaganda.

11:20–11:35 Break

11:35–12:25 Session II: Chagai M. Weiss (U of Toronto Political Science), "Shooting the Messenger: The Polarizing Effects of Political Attacks on the Press"
Discussant: Jeremy Bowles (UCL Political Science)

Government attacks on the press are increasingly common in polarized societies, yet their consequences remain underexplored. We argue that such attacks polarize politics by altering journalists' production of anti-government content, reshaping media consumption and evaluation, and shifting citizens' political attitudes. We test this theory in Israel, a context marked by rising polarization and intensified attacks on the press. In Study 1, we estimate the effects of a government attack on radio hosts using an event-study design, finding an immediate but short-lived 42% increase in anti-government content among targeted hosts. In Study 2, survey-based selection and evaluation tasks reveal that attacks on the press polarize both the consumption and evaluation of content produced by targeted journalists. In Study 3, an information experiment shows that learning about attacks on the press does not affect government supporters, but increases opposition supporters' preferences for social distance from outpartisans and concerns about democratic backsliding, while reducing their trust in government. Our findings highlight how attacks on the press shift media production, consumption, and political attitudes, creating a potentially reinforcing cycle of polarization.

12:25–1:25 Lunch

1:25–2:15 Session III: Tianyi Wang (U of Toronto Economics), "McCarthyism, Media, and Political Repression: Evidence from Hollywood"
Discussant: Elliot Ash (ETH Zurich Economics)

Demagogues have existed throughout history, yet their impact on individuals and society remains little understood. We study a far-reaching episode of demagoguery in American history. From the late 1940s to 1950s, anti-communist hysteria led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others gripped the nation. Hollywood became a key battleground, where hundreds were accused of having communist ties. To study the Red Scare in Hollywood, we assemble a unique collection of individual and film data spanning 1930–1970. We show that the anti-communist accusations targeted progressive personalities with dissenting views. Actors and screenwriters who were accused experienced a setback in their careers lasting a decade or more. Beyond the accused, we also document a decline in progressive films during the McCarthy era. We provide suggestive evidence that this shift in film content made society more conservative. Areas more exposed to the decline in film progressiveness saw increased Republican support in presidential elections.

2:15–2:30 Break

2:30–3:20 Session IV: Jon Green (Duke Political Science),  "A Framework for Studying Podcasts and Their Audiences at Scale"
Discussant: Andy Guess (Princeton Political Science) 

A large and increasing share of media consumption in the United States takes place on podcasts. However, two of the most theoretically interesting features of this development also make it difficult to study empirically: the boundary between political and non-political shows is porous, and the audience is highly fragmented in ways that frustrate standard survey research. We address these challenges by first inferring political discussion frequency, relative left/right orientation, and network cluster in a sample of roughly 7,000 shows that are either categorized as political or share at least one guest with a show categorized as political. We then demonstrate how these show-level metadata can be incorporated into survey research to dramatically broaden and deepen our understanding of the political information consumption in this developing ecosystem.

3:20–3:35 Break

3:35–4:25 Session V: Andrey Simonov (Columbia Business School), "Platform Power in News Aggregators"
Discussant: Cassandra Handan-Nader (NYU Political Science)

News aggregators are primary gatekeepers of online news, shaping both consumption and production through the algorithms that rank stories and sources. We provide the first large scale estimates of this algorithmic power using Yandex News, Russia’s largest aggregator. Combining snapshots of its front-page rankings with 12.3 million articles from 50 outlets and daily traffic data, we estimate that a front-page reference generates roughly 380,000 additional daily visitors for an outlet—an effect that is stable across news topics, event types, and consumer demographics. Exploiting a 2016 Russian law that made aggregators liable for cited content as a natural experiment, we show that Yandex halved its references to independent outlets, redistributing traffic by up to 20–27% across outlets. Consumers did not penalize this manipulation: referred outlets continued to capture the same share of front-page visitors. Outlets removed from the rankings subsequently shifted toward longer articles and stopped optimizing headlines for the algorithm, showing that aggregator algorithms affect not only consumption but also production incentives.

4:30–6:00 Happy Hour