The Paradox of Information Control Under Authoritarianism: Explaining Trust in Competing Messages in China

Abstract

To steer public opinion, autocracies prioritize state media reports of political news while marginalizing commercial and foreign media. Can this dominance guarantee people’s trust in state media news? We contend that rumors, circulated via informal channels and resistant to state information control, present a formidable challenge to public trust in state media news. Our two survey experiments in China pitted news of varying information quality (e.g. informative/detailed reports vs cursory mentions of events) from state media sources against rumors, showing that state media news can retain high levels of trustworthiness only if its information quality is high; however, low-quality state media news resulting from information control diminishes its trustworthiness and prompts people to believe rumors. Low-quality rumors have more negative effects than high-quality rumors on news trustworthiness and citizens’ satisfaction with government policies. Thus, information control can paradoxically erode trust in state media, which often represent the government in autocracies.