Terrorist Propaganda

By Travers Barclay Child, Kai Gehring, Sarah Langlotz, Austin Wright, and Rossella De Sabbata

This paper leverages granular survey data from within the conflict theater of Afghanistan to investigate how plausibly exogenous exposure to Islamic State (IS) propaganda in-fluences views towards local and international forces. We study two mediums of ter-rorist propaganda, exploiting high-frequency time variation in global distribution of IS videos and plausibly exogenous signal penetration of a prominent IS radio tower in Afghanistan. Our findings suggest violent video and radio content undermines public support for IS and its key opponents, while increasing demand for international forces to remain in the country. By contrast, videos depicting a capacity for IS governance boost their support.

University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2024-121
Chicago: University of Chicago, The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) , 2024. 59p.