Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes

What motivates Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes and how are they carried out? “Influence campaigns” are often recognized as highly pertinent to international security, yet they remain understudied. This paper develops and tests a theory that explains these media campaigns as st...

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Main Author: WANG, Frances Yaping
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3349
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4606/viewcontent/Barking_WO_Biting_Accepted_v20210504_SSRN.pdf
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spelling sg-smu-ink.soss_research-46062021-10-27T07:29:28Z Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes WANG, Frances Yaping What motivates Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes and how are they carried out? “Influence campaigns” are often recognized as highly pertinent to international security, yet they remain understudied. This paper develops and tests a theory that explains these media campaigns as strategic actions to align domestic public opinion when it deviates from the state’s preferred foreign policy, exploiting the media’s mobilization or pacification effect. These divergent media effects correspond to two types of media campaigns respectively – the mobilization campaigns and the pacification campaigns. The pacification campaigns are particularly important because they indicate that hawkish rhetoric may counterintuitively pacify the public, and hence its adoption implies a moderate foreign policy intent. A medium-n congruence test of 21 Chinese diplomatic crises and process-tracing of the 2016 Sino-Philippines arbitration case offer strong support for the theory and demonstrate how a pacification campaign works and how it differs from a mobilization campaign. 2021-10-01T07:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3349 info:doi/10.6084/m9.figshare.14459172 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4606/viewcontent/Barking_WO_Biting_Accepted_v20210504_SSRN.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection School of Social Sciences eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University media campaigns authoritarian politics interstate disputes Asian Studies International Relations
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic media campaigns
authoritarian politics
interstate disputes
Asian Studies
International Relations
spellingShingle media campaigns
authoritarian politics
interstate disputes
Asian Studies
International Relations
WANG, Frances Yaping
Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes
description What motivates Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes and how are they carried out? “Influence campaigns” are often recognized as highly pertinent to international security, yet they remain understudied. This paper develops and tests a theory that explains these media campaigns as strategic actions to align domestic public opinion when it deviates from the state’s preferred foreign policy, exploiting the media’s mobilization or pacification effect. These divergent media effects correspond to two types of media campaigns respectively – the mobilization campaigns and the pacification campaigns. The pacification campaigns are particularly important because they indicate that hawkish rhetoric may counterintuitively pacify the public, and hence its adoption implies a moderate foreign policy intent. A medium-n congruence test of 21 Chinese diplomatic crises and process-tracing of the 2016 Sino-Philippines arbitration case offer strong support for the theory and demonstrate how a pacification campaign works and how it differs from a mobilization campaign.
format text
author WANG, Frances Yaping
author_facet WANG, Frances Yaping
author_sort WANG, Frances Yaping
title Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes
title_short Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes
title_full Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes
title_fullStr Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes
title_full_unstemmed Barking without biting: Understanding Chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes
title_sort barking without biting: understanding chinese media campaigns during foreign policy disputes
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2021
url https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3349
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4606/viewcontent/Barking_WO_Biting_Accepted_v20210504_SSRN.pdf
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