Xu Xu

Thank you!

Disguised Repression: Targeting Opponents with Nonpolitical Crimes to Undermine Dissent | The Journal of Politics Why do authoritarian regimes charge political opponents with nonpolitical crimes when they can levy charges directly related to opponents’ political activism? We argue that doing so disguises politica...

9/ We are grateful to the editors, reviewers, and many colleagues for their helpful comments, as well as our research assistants for their excellent work! Read the full paper here: 🔗 doi.org/10.1086/734267

8/ Our work shows that framing repression can transform it from something widely opposed to something the public may support. It also points to the central role of morality in understanding mobilization and repression.

7/ Non-political charges are associated with a decreased willingness of supporters to engage in dissent on behalf of the arrested individuals as well as decreased overall support for the critic.

6/ Analyzing over 3.6M Weibo posts from 2010 to 2014, we find that dissidents with larger online followings are more likely to be charged with non-political crimes during the 2013 crackdown on online critics in China.

5/ Disguised repression also deters other activists by blurring the boundaries of punishable actions and raising the risk that even minor or past wrongdoings can be used as pretexts for punishment, fostering fear and self-censorship.

4/ It appears that disguised repression demobilizes followers by undermining dissidents’ moral authority: Respondents perceive the dissident as less moral when they are charged with a nonpolitical crime as opposed to a political crime.

3/ To answer this question, we first conducted a survey experiment in China. The results shows that disguised repression—compared to blatant repression—reduces support for dissidents, lowers willingness to dissent on their behalf, and increases support for their repression.

2/ Authoritarian governments convict some dissidents using nonpolitical charges like corruption, tax evasion, or sex crimes, what we call disguised repression. But why do this when political activism is already illegal and others are punished with blatant repression?

Why do authoritarian states charge political opponents with non-political crimes? In our @thejop.bsky.social paper with Jennifer Pan & @yiqingxu.bsky.social, we examine how *Disguised Repression* undermines opponents’ moral authority and mobilization capacity. doi.org/10.1086/7342...

8) A heartfelt thank you to the editorial team, the anonymous reviewers, and the many scholars—all of whom provided constructive feedback that greatly improved our paper! A special thanks to our brilliant research assistants for their great help!

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library The rise of social media in the digital era poses unprecedented challenges to authoritarian regimes that aim to influence public attitudes and behaviors. To address these challenges, we argue that au...

7/ This work demonstrates that digital technology has fundamentally changed not only propaganda content, but also how propaganda materials are produced and disseminated. Read the full paper here: 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

6/ User engagement (video likes, comments, & reshares) is higher for central-level videos repurposed from local content compared to those originating directly from the center.

5/ Using a deep-learning based, frame-to-frame video-similarity learning framework to compare millions of video pairs at different levels, we find that content often flows bottom-up: central accounts pick up and elevate videos produced by local accounts.

4/ What do these accounts post? Very little is ideological or leader-focused. The majority of content portrays a moral society where ordinary people & officials do good deeds, aligned with “positive energy” (正能量). Gov content drastically differs from non-gov trending videos.

3/ Massive #’s of regime-affiliated accounts are mobilized to produce and post videos on a daily basis, especially during weekdays.

2/ In the digital media era, top-down propaganda struggles to reach fragmented audiences. Analyzing 5M+ Douyin videos from 18K+ regime-affiliated accounts, we find propaganda has been *decentralized* to numerous local producers, e.g. local media, firefighters, civil servants.

How has digital media transformed authoritarian propaganda? In our new @ajpseditor.bsky.social‬ paper with Yingdan Lu, Jennifer Pan & ‪@yiqingxu.bsky.social‬, we proposed a *decentralized propaganda* model and empirically demonstrate its existence on Douyin: doi.org/10.1111/ajps... 🧵