Foreign Media, Selective Exposure, and Opinion Change in China

Abstract

What kind of content do citizens in a developing and authoritarian country like to acquire from Western free media? What are the effects of their potentially selective exposure? Through a survey experiment with 1200 Chinese Internet users from diverse sociodemographic backgrounds, we find that Chinese citizens with higher pro-Western orientations and lower regime evaluations are more inclined to read content that is positive about foreign countries and/or negative about China. More importantly, reading relatively positive foreign media content about foreign countries can improve rather than worsen the domestic evaluations of citizens who self-select such content. We argue this is because reputable Western media's reports are generally more realistic than overly rosy information about foreign socioeconomic conditions that popularly circulates in China. Consequently, foreign media may have a corrective function and enhance regime stability in an authoritarian country by making regime critics less critical. Along the way the article also introduces a new variant of the Patient Preference Trial design that integrates self-selection and random assignment of treatments in a way useful for studying information effects.