by: Lanabi La Lova
| How do news manipulations in an autocracy vary across different types of mass media? I hypothesise that state-controlled news published online, for consumption by a digitally literate audience, exhibits less pro-regime bias than programming created for those who rely on national television to learn about daily affairs. I test this hypothesis using headlines displayed on the Yandex News Aggregator, transcripts from top three popular state-controlled television channels Channel One, Russia-1, and NTV, and reports from a private news agency Interfax. Using a dictionary technique, I analyse 618,570 news reports which represent almost all popular news flow in Russia in 2019. Results indicate that state-controlled online platform, in contrast to television, demonstrated less tendency to censor stories about political opposition and anti-government protests, but promoted stronger measurable bias in the coverage of news from Ukraine. These findings contribute to the literature on political communication in autocracies and autocratic resilience. |
Authoritarian Political Systems Group 