Peer-Reviewed Publications
Authoritarian regimes commonly justify internet censorship by framing the internet as a threat to their citizens that must be tightly controlled for their own protection. This threat rhetoric underpins government censorship and creates a “psychological firewall” driving public support for a censored internet. Based on risk and decision-making scholarship we evaluate how mass media and partisan regime support promulgate these threat perceptions, and in turn how they influence citizen attitudes about censorship. Employing Russia as a case study, we tested our hypotheses with a national survey (N=1600) conducted in May 2014. We found that reliance on Russian national TV news predicted greater internet threat perceptions, and in turn these threat perceptions significantly increased support for online political censorship. Approval of the Putin government further amplified the impact of these threat perceptions on support for censorship. Implications for understanding psychological foundations for support for censorship in authoritarian contexts are discussed.
Why do citizens seek out alternative information sources via the Internet or social media in censored mass media environments? How do they react when they perceive their media freedom is threatened? Drawing upon theoretical work in psychological reactance and comparative democratization we propose a new communication construct called motivated resistance to censorship (MRC) that assesses cognitive and affective reactions to perceived threats to citizens’ media freedom, and in turn predicts online information-seeking as a mitigation strategy. We also evaluate how related concepts of willingness-to-self-censor (WTSC) and proneness-to-reactance (PtR) moderate the relationship between media freedom, perceived threats and MRC. We evaluate our proposed moderation-model within the context of Turkey, as there is a high level of government media censorship but still a comparatively open Internet information environment. Our analyses evaluating our model are based on two different surveys collected during the winter and spring of 2015. The first was a national face-to-face household survey of Turkish respondents (N=1161), while the second surveyed Turkish Internet users recruited through a commercial opt-in survey panel (N=2002). Our results validate the central propositions of our model that perceived threats to media freedom lead to reactance (MRC), which in turn predicts more frequent online political information-seeking behavior. In addition, we find that psychological traits related to WTSC and PtR either dampen or amplify the relationship between perceived threat and MRC, respectively. The contributions of adopting reactance theory to better understand citizen responses to media censorship, future directions for research, and policy implications are discussed.
The chapter examines two major impacts of increasingly pervasive information and communication technologies (ICT) usage, one on protest and social movements themselves and another on scholarship about these phenomena. For the former, we review research on ICT-enabled infrastructural changes within movements, including: (1) the introduction of new formats of protest and a new model of power; (2) the ability to organize outside of formal social movement organizations (SMOs) and/or within dramatically altered SMOs; and (3) the facilitation of transnational and non-Western protest and social movements. Regarding social movement scholarship, we argue that the information-saturated environments that social movements operate within increasingly require scholars to draw on political communication research. This connection may lead social movement scholars to complicate existing understandings (e.g., agenda setting), identify hitherto unexamined determinants of social movement effectiveness (e.g., priming), and add nuance to social movement scholars’ understanding of audiences and audience reception, among other topics.
The American electorate is characterized by political polarization, and especially by increasingly negative affective responses toward opposing party members. To what extent might this be attributed to exposure to information reinforcing individuals’ partisan identity versus information representing the views of partisan opponents? And is this a uniquely American phenomenon? This study uses survey data collected immediately following recent national elections in two countries, the United States and Israel, to address these questions. Results across the two nations are generally consistent, and indicate that pro- and counterattitudinal information exposure has distinct influences on perceptions of and attitudes toward members of opposing parties, despite numerous cross-cultural differences. We discuss implications in light of recent evidence about partisans’ tendency to engage in selective exposure.
Research Reports:
- Nisbet, E.C., Kamenchuk, O., & Dal, A. (2017) A psychological firewall? Risk perceptions and public support for online censorship in Russia". Social Science Quarterly.
Authoritarian regimes commonly justify internet censorship by framing the internet as a threat to their citizens that must be tightly controlled for their own protection. This threat rhetoric underpins government censorship and creates a “psychological firewall” driving public support for a censored internet. Based on risk and decision-making scholarship we evaluate how mass media and partisan regime support promulgate these threat perceptions, and in turn how they influence citizen attitudes about censorship. Employing Russia as a case study, we tested our hypotheses with a national survey (N=1600) conducted in May 2014. We found that reliance on Russian national TV news predicted greater internet threat perceptions, and in turn these threat perceptions significantly increased support for online political censorship. Approval of the Putin government further amplified the impact of these threat perceptions on support for censorship. Implications for understanding psychological foundations for support for censorship in authoritarian contexts are discussed.
- Behrouzian, G., Nisbet, E. C., Dal, A., & Carkoglu, A. (2016). Resisting censorship: How citizens navigate closed-media environments. International Journal of Communication.
Why do citizens seek out alternative information sources via the Internet or social media in censored mass media environments? How do they react when they perceive their media freedom is threatened? Drawing upon theoretical work in psychological reactance and comparative democratization we propose a new communication construct called motivated resistance to censorship (MRC) that assesses cognitive and affective reactions to perceived threats to citizens’ media freedom, and in turn predicts online information-seeking as a mitigation strategy. We also evaluate how related concepts of willingness-to-self-censor (WTSC) and proneness-to-reactance (PtR) moderate the relationship between media freedom, perceived threats and MRC. We evaluate our proposed moderation-model within the context of Turkey, as there is a high level of government media censorship but still a comparatively open Internet information environment. Our analyses evaluating our model are based on two different surveys collected during the winter and spring of 2015. The first was a national face-to-face household survey of Turkish respondents (N=1161), while the second surveyed Turkish Internet users recruited through a commercial opt-in survey panel (N=2002). Our results validate the central propositions of our model that perceived threats to media freedom lead to reactance (MRC), which in turn predicts more frequent online political information-seeking behavior. In addition, we find that psychological traits related to WTSC and PtR either dampen or amplify the relationship between perceived threat and MRC, respectively. The contributions of adopting reactance theory to better understand citizen responses to media censorship, future directions for research, and policy implications are discussed.
- Earl, J., Hunt J., Garrett, R. K., & Dal, A. (2015). New Technologies and Social Movements. In D. della Porta & M. Diani (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Social Movements.
The chapter examines two major impacts of increasingly pervasive information and communication technologies (ICT) usage, one on protest and social movements themselves and another on scholarship about these phenomena. For the former, we review research on ICT-enabled infrastructural changes within movements, including: (1) the introduction of new formats of protest and a new model of power; (2) the ability to organize outside of formal social movement organizations (SMOs) and/or within dramatically altered SMOs; and (3) the facilitation of transnational and non-Western protest and social movements. Regarding social movement scholarship, we argue that the information-saturated environments that social movements operate within increasingly require scholars to draw on political communication research. This connection may lead social movement scholars to complicate existing understandings (e.g., agenda setting), identify hitherto unexamined determinants of social movement effectiveness (e.g., priming), and add nuance to social movement scholars’ understanding of audiences and audience reception, among other topics.
- Garrett, R. K., Dvir Gvirsman, S., Johnson, B. K., Tsfati, Y., Neo, R., & Dal, A. (2014). Implications of pro- and counterattitudinal information exposure for affective polarization. Human Communication Research, 40, 309-332. doi: 10.1111/hcre.12028
The American electorate is characterized by political polarization, and especially by increasingly negative affective responses toward opposing party members. To what extent might this be attributed to exposure to information reinforcing individuals’ partisan identity versus information representing the views of partisan opponents? And is this a uniquely American phenomenon? This study uses survey data collected immediately following recent national elections in two countries, the United States and Israel, to address these questions. Results across the two nations are generally consistent, and indicate that pro- and counterattitudinal information exposure has distinct influences on perceptions of and attitudes toward members of opposing parties, despite numerous cross-cultural differences. We discuss implications in light of recent evidence about partisans’ tendency to engage in selective exposure.
Research Reports:
- Dal, A., Nisbet, E. C., & Carkoglu, A. (2016). "Patterns of News Media Consumption and Social Media Use in Turkey" in Rising Soft Powers: Turkey, USC Center for Public Diplomacy.
- Nisbet, E. C., Dal, A., Behrouzian, G., & Carkoglu, A. (October, 2015). Benchmarking demand: Turkey's contested Internet". Center for Global Communication Studies, The Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania.