Authors

Maxim Alyukov¹;  ¹ University of Manchester, UK

Discussion

References to disinformation have become a prominent aspect of modern political communication. While democratic governments attempt to combat disinformation spread by authoritarian regimes, populist politicians have adopted similar discourse to discredit their political rivals. Following the suit, autocrats have embraced the same rhetoric as a propaganda tool to refute information critical of their governments. This oversaturation raises the issue of the second-order effects of disinformation. However, research on this issue remains scarce. To fill this gap, I focus on the effects of disinformation discourse in authoritarian Russia. Following the invasion of Ukraine, Putin's regime turned disinformation discourse into one of its primary propaganda strategies. Regime critics inside Russia, as well as democratic governments, adopted similar discourse to combat authoritarian propaganda, making Russia an ideal case study for this issue. I argue that in saturated media environments, raising awareness of disinformation can paradoxically aid autocrats by spurring citizens' motivated reasoning. When partisan identities are involved, people tend to accept belief-consistent information and reject belief-inconsistent information. I hypothesise that awareness of disinformation can provide both regime supporters and regime critics with additional cognitive resources to dismiss belief-inconsistent information as disinformation, thereby reinforcing pro-regime or anti-regime attitudes. To demonstrate this process, I rely on an online experiment (n = 3,500) embedded in the Panel Study of Russian Public Opinion and Attitudes, conducted in Russia in 2024. Different groups of participants will receive one of the following: a textual statement unrelated to disinformation, a warning emphasising the dangers of disinformation, or warnings emphasising the dangers of disinformation attributed to either pro-regime or anti-regime sources. To examine the effect of disinformation awareness on motivated reasoning, participants will be asked to rate the credibility of both pro-regime and anti-regime statements regarding the causes of the invasion of Ukraine, the reasons for the failure of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the scale of the economic crisis in Russia, and the extent of mobilisation in Russia. If the gap between the levels of agreement and disagreement with pro-regime and anti-regime statements widens, this would suggest that awareness of disinformation serves as a cognitive resource, allowing participants to reject politically unwelcome information. The results will contribute to the research on authoritarian propaganda in new media environments, while also highlighting policy implications relevant for countering propaganda in both authoritarian and democratic settings.