15:30 - 17:45
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Sergi Martinez
Discussant/s:
Janina Beiser-McGrath
Meeting Room M

Amy Yunyu Chiang, Marlene Mauk
Political repression, protest, and citizens’ attitudes towards the state

Ala' Alrababa'h
Diversionary Discourse: Media and Authoritarian Survival

Sergi Martinez
The Consequences of Selective Authoritarian Repression on Political Behavior

Katrin Paula
Repression Will Be Televised: Backlash vs. Local Deterrence
Diversionary Discourse: Media and Authoritarian Survival
Ala' Alrababa'h
Stanford University

How do autocrats use media to preserve their power? The literature on authoritarian durability has largely focused on strategies related to repression, co-optation, and legitimation but until recently there has not been much work on the role of authoritarian media. In this project, I propose a new theory for how autocrats manipulate media. I argue that during domestic strife, regimes manipulate the discourse around security threats in order to dissuade the public from taking part in protests. Manipulating security threats reduces dissent by emphasizing urgent threats from an out-group, blaming foreign powers for domestic failures, and showing the regime as the sole protector of the public. I test this theory using a quantitative analysis of hundreds of thousands of articles from Arab newspapers. In addition to the quantitative analysis, I conduct a qualitative case study of coverage in Egyptian regime media of two instances of threats unrelated to Egypt: the London 7/7 attacks and the Paris 2014 attacks. The London attacks happened when there were no significant protests in Egypt but the Paris attacks happened during protests in Egypt, allowing us to examine how protests influenced regime coverage. This project contributes to the literatures on authoritarian durability and the use of autocratic media. It also advances the scholarship on autocratic responses to the Arab uprisings and demonstrates how regimes have reconsolidated in the period after the uprisings.

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