Disinformation and Regime Survival.

IF 1.5 2区社会学 Q2 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Political Research Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-09-01 Epub Date: 2024-05-27 DOI:10.1177/10659129241252811

Yuko Sato, Felix Wiebrecht

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Disinformation has transformed into a global issue and while it is seen as a growing concern to democracy today, autocrats have long used it as a part of their propaganda repertoire. Yet, no study has tested the effect of disinformation on regime stability and breakdown beyond country-specific studies. Drawing on novel measures from the Digital Society Project (DSP) estimating the levels of disinformation disseminated by governments across 148 countries between 2000-2022 and from the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset, we provide the first global comparative study of disinformation and survival of democratic and authoritarian regimes, respectively. The results show that in authoritarian regimes, disinformation helps rulers to stay in power as regimes with higher levels of disinformation are less likely to experience democratization episodes. In democracies, on the other hand, disinformation increases the probability of autocratization onsets. As such, this study is the first to provide comparative evidence on the negative effects of disinformation on democracy as well as on the prospects of democratization.

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虚假信息与政权生存。

虚假信息已成为一个全球性问题，虽然它被视为当今民主国家日益关注的问题，但专制国家长期以来一直将其作为宣传手段的一部分。然而，除了针对具体国家的研究之外，还没有研究检验过虚假信息对政权稳定和崩溃的影响。数字社会项目（DSP）估算了 2000-2022 年间 148 个国家的政府传播虚假信息的水平，而政权转型数据集（ERT）则估算了这些国家的政府传播虚假信息的水平，利用这些数据集，我们首次对虚假信息与民主和专制政权的生存分别进行了全球比较研究。研究结果表明，在专制政权中，虚假信息有助于统治者继续掌权，因为虚假信息水平较高的政权经历民主化事件的可能性较小。另一方面，在民主政体中，虚假信息会增加专制化爆发的概率。因此，本研究首次提供了关于虚假信息对民主以及民主化前景的负面影响的比较证据。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Political Research Quarterly POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

3.60

自引率

4.80%

发文量

109

期刊介绍： Political Research Quarterly (PRQ) is the official journal of the Western Political Science Association. PRQ seeks to publish scholarly research of exceptionally high merit that makes notable contributions in any subfield of political science. The editors especially encourage submissions that employ a mixture of theoretical approaches or multiple methodologies to address major political problems or puzzles at a local, national, or global level. Collections of articles on a common theme or debate, to be published as short symposia, are welcome as well as individual submissions.