Cargo 200

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the Political Behaviour Colloquium features a presentation by Vladimir Zabolotskiy (Postdoctoral researcher, University of Bolzano).

Can war fatalities hinder the spread of propaganda and erode regime support in an autocracy? While extensive research has examined how war affects political attitudes in democracies, the implications for autocrats remain unclear due to their ability to manipulate war narratives and the mixed effects of military losses on public sentiment. To address this gap, we explore the temporal-spatial variation of Russian fatalities in Ukraine and its impact on social media engagement with pro-war and pro-regime content within local social media groups. Our estimates reveal that user engagement with posts featuring military vocabulary or mentioning the president or government decreases following the death of a local soldier. Importantly, we observe this effect only when the obituary is posted directly on the group’s page, suggesting that the decline in engagement might be primarily due to direct exposure to information about the fatalities rather than the death toll itself. In addition, we find no change in engagement with educational or patriotic content, suggesting that the observed effect cannot be attributed to a general decrease in social media usage. Our findings indicate that new information on the costs of war can disrupt propaganda in autocracies and potentially erode the autocrat’s support base. More broadly, these results underscore the role of independent media in countering false narratives, contributing to the ongoing discussion on misinformation.

The Zoom link will be sent upon registration. If you would like to receive the paper, please contact PoliticalBehaviour.Colloquium@eui.eu.