Sato Yuko, Wiebrecht Felix
Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku, Japan.
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Polit Res Q. 2024 Sep;77(3):1010-1025. doi: 10.1177/10659129241252811. Epub 2024 May 27.
Disinformation has transformed into a global issue and while it is seen as a growing concern to democracy today, autocrats have long used it as a part of their propaganda repertoire. Yet, no study has tested the effect of disinformation on regime stability and breakdown beyond country-specific studies. Drawing on novel measures from the Digital Society Project (DSP) estimating the levels of disinformation disseminated by governments across 148 countries between 2000-2022 and from the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset, we provide the first global comparative study of disinformation and survival of democratic and authoritarian regimes, respectively. The results show that in authoritarian regimes, disinformation helps rulers to stay in power as regimes with higher levels of disinformation are less likely to experience democratization episodes. In democracies, on the other hand, disinformation increases the probability of autocratization onsets. As such, this study is the first to provide comparative evidence on the negative effects of disinformation on democracy as well as on the prospects of democratization.
虚假信息已演变成一个全球性问题，虽然如今它被视为对民主的一个日益严重的担忧，但独裁者长期以来一直将其作为宣传手段的一部分。然而，除了针对特定国家的研究外，尚无研究检验虚假信息对政权稳定性和崩溃的影响。利用数字社会项目（DSP）的新方法来估计2000年至2022年间148个国家政府传播的虚假信息水平，并借助政权转型事件（ERT）数据集，我们分别对虚假信息与民主政权和独裁政权的存续进行了首次全球比较研究。结果表明，在独裁政权中，虚假信息有助于统治者掌权，因为虚假信息水平较高的政权经历民主化事件的可能性较小。另一方面，在民主国家，虚假信息增加了独裁化开始的可能性。因此，本研究首次提供了关于虚假信息对民主的负面影响以及民主化前景的比较证据。
