Western Media Exposure and Chinese Immigrants’ Political Perceptions

Abstract

Using evidence from an original survey experiment among 3,032 Chinese student immigrants in the United States, I examine how exposure to Western media changes their evaluations of the Chinese government’s performance and their trust in official discourse. My findings suggest that reading Western reports on China shifts immigrants’ perceptions of government performance in different directions, depending on how similar reports are censored in Chinese media. On issues that are strictly censored, immigrants exposed to Western reports became more critical of their home government’s performance and decreased their trust in official discourse. Conversely, on issues that are relatively open to independent reporting, immigrants did not become more critical of government performance, and their trust in official discourse maintained after being exposed to Western information.