The study “Harnessing Distrust: News, Credibility Heuristics, and War in an Authoritarian Regime” by Maxim Alyukov from King’s College London looked at how Russian citizens used credibility heuristics to assess regime propaganda during the conflict in Ukraine in 2016-2017.
Addressing the current, escalated conflict starting in 2022, the author notes the worrying trend noted by researchers: many pro-war Russians refused to believe that their regime had been involved in shelling civilians despite news or even reports from relatives in Ukraine that show the contrary, a phenomenon described as surreal.
However, this study does not focus on the current, larger conflict or reception of international news, but on earlier events and how a total of eight focus groups in 2016-2017 – four in Moscow and four in St. Petersburg received three different reports on the situation involving Euromaidan protests in 2013, the Donetsk referendum in 2014, and a clash between pro-Russian forces and the Ukrainian National in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.
The author makes three hypotheses. First, that the “authority heuristic” plays an important role in evaluation of credibility. Second, that due to state media presenting the situation in Ukraine as apolitical due to distrust of politics, “authenticity heuristic” will be important in evaluation of credibility. Third, because Russians are aware of media bias and look for manipulative intent, that “persuasive intent heuristic” will play an important role.
In addition, the author makes the hypotheses that the use of personal experience and popular wisdom are negatively associated with the first two above, and positively associated with “persuasive intent heuristic”.
The participants expressed a significant degree of distrust towards regime propaganda and attempted to rely on personal experience and popular wisdom as alternatives. Answering to the hypotheses, personal experience and popular wisdom made the participants less likely to rely on authority heuristic – with more experience and popular wisdom authoritative sources were trusted less – but more likely to rely on authenticity heuristic.
In general, the use of personal experience and popular wisdom undermined the support for propaganda in general, but reinforced some specific stories. Political alignment of the participants affected the results – apolitical audiences were more likely to rely on personal experience more. However, the results of the pro-regime audiences showed that the propaganda capitalized on general media distrust, and they relied on regime propaganda based on popular wisdom and the use of authenticity heuristic.
The analysis lends further credence to the earlier studies that Russian regime propaganda seeks to instill mistrust toward any form of media and political information. For example, regime propaganda frames the conflict in Ukraine as a conflict between the political aims of the Ukrainian government and the apolitical needs of the Eastern Ukrainians.
The patterns revealed by the study also have relevance in democratic contexts. Partisan echo chambers tend to form due to mistrust in mainstream media, when people seek alternative information sources. The study points to a similar mechanism in a different context.
Additionally, the results highlight the need to rethink some conventional assumptions about exposure to untrustworthy information. While critical attitudes towards media are seen as important for democratic citizenry, the study shows that it can backfire – amplifying the credibility of untrustworthy information.
Finally, in relation to the current conflict and the pressing need to puncture Russia’s disinformation bubble, as Financial Times put it, the study tempers the hopes of such circumvention of the blockade as the audience is already very skeptical about the very possibility of trustworthy information.
The article “Harnessing Distrust: News, Credibility Heuristics, and War in an Authoritarian Regime” by Maxim Alyukov is in Political Communication. (free abstract).
Picture: “Донбас – це Україна” Boundless fields of wheat in the east of Ukraine
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