Journalism In An Age Of Authoritarianism

As a journalist, I have devoted my career not only to the practice of my craft, but to advancing the mission of my profession. Many working in the media aspire to be the bulwark against tyranny, the protectors of liberty, the defenders of democracy. It is our job to represent the interests of the people. Yet we are failing. Badly.

As trust in the media declines in countries around the world, people are struggling to agree on basic facts, including the outcomes of elections. Increasingly, they are turning away from traditional media sources.

Meanwhile, purveyors of lies and hate are growing their influence across the globe, using information as a weapon to subvert liberal democracy and destabilize open societies. World leaders including Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán have systematically demonized the media, weakened faith in democratic institutions, fueled tribal polarization and undermined trust in the truth itself.

In this increasingly authoritarian age, how can journalists fulfill the mission of the fourth estate? How can we counter disinformation, hold the powerful accountable and champion truth and justice when we are losing the audiences we serve? To answer these questions, we need to go back to fundamental assumptions about the function of journalism in society and adapt our approach to meet this moment.

This is the journey I have been on for the last eight years. From my bases at the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University, I have collaborated with sociologists, data scientists, lawyers and fellow journalists to understand what attracts people to the propaganda pushed by authoritarians — and what journalists can do about it.

In this research, we have conducted polls, focus groups and experiments to test strategies for reaching audiences who seem to have succumbed to authoritarian lies, propaganda and conspiracy theories. While much of this work was done in Europe, the lessons we learned can be applied broadly, including here in the U.S., where faith in the media has dropped to a new low.

Our goal was to try something different from the fact-checking and town-hall initiatives already underway around the world. Debunking is an essential and noble endeavor, keeping alive the flame of truth in a cynical age, but much research shows that fact-checking tends to rebound when it bumps up against people’s partisan biases. And while online town halls and engineered one-to-one interactions between members of different partisan groups are also useful, they of course involve people who want to take part in such exercises in the first place.

Instead, my focus has been on how to create mass factual content — TV documentaries and podcast series, news stories and socially aware entertainment — that undercuts the initial appeal of authoritarian propaganda. This is no longer a challenge just for journalists in the traditional sense of the word; these days, everyone is a digital creator the moment they post something online.

Effective media reform certainly won’t be easy; the industry faces myriad challenges, including financial instability and shrinking advertising revenue. But adapting and fulfilling our mission is a critical endeavor. The future cohesion, security and viability of democratic states are at stake.

Breaking The Populist Coalition

Authoritarians and illiberal populists try to divide societies into crass binaries, often along culture war lines: patriots versus globalists; traditional-values conservatives versus woke liberals. Journalists must avoid reinforcing these categories. They should not assume that the so-called “other side” is a homogenous block; that is exactly what propagandists want. Instead, journalists should find cracks in the coalition and engage their audiences in a broader conversation.

Consider the case of Hungary. The country’s shifting political climate under Orbán’s leadership suggests that populist propaganda can fracture when the media focuses on genuine, shared anxieties.

Since returning to power in 2010, Orbán has defined himself as the defender of traditional, Catholic Hungarians against supposed nefarious plots by the EU and Jewish financier George Soros to destroy faith and family. This has made it easier for Orbán to take over independent media, undermine courts, develop laws to defund civil society, curtail academic freedoms and normalize corruption.

But Orbán’s propaganda was never as solid as he hoped. It is now disintegrating: Despite his control over business and media, his party is some 10% behind in a Publicus Institute poll, losing ground to a movement that unites both liberals and conservatives.

When we conducted polling and focus groups in Hungary in 2020, we could already see the cracks in the Orbán edifice. We found that only 22% of people actually believed the conspiracy narratives about Soros. Issues around the culture wars, including immigration and the “defense of Hungarian identity,” were in fact of low salience compared to impoverishment or corruption when it came to voting.

We identified 9% of the electorate who were right-wing but were disillusioned with Orbán and concerned about his authoritarian tendencies and corruption. They disliked the left-leaning parties even more, though, and felt that much of the independent media was too soft on the opposition. Still, Hungarians across the political spectrum felt like second-class citizens in Europe — a sense of inferiority Orbán’s propaganda often played on.

So what caused Orbán’s propaganda to start crumbling? A new opposition leader, Péter Magyar, emerged from inside the conservative movement and focused audiences on corruption and claims of pedophilia inside the government. He used Facebook and a new generation of YouTube news channels to argue that he could both fight corruption and enhance Hungary’s status on the world stage.

As a result, the divisions driven by Orbán’s rhetoric have been scrambled. Concerns about the economy and democracy have been allied with an assertive patriotism.

The lesson for the media is that we can engage with diverse audiences if we cut through the culture war binaries imposed by propagandists. Picking the issues that truly matter to people is the first step. The second is to dig deeper into the underlying anxieties and traumas that authoritarian propaganda exploits — an approach my colleagues and I got to put into practice during our work in Ukraine.

Digging Deeper

Authoritarian propaganda functions like a cult: It exploits people’s pain and fears to create dependence on the leader. We wanted to explore how the media could instead help people process shared traumas to foster independence, which brought us to Ukraine in 2018.

For decades, the Russian state had been pushing pro-Soviet propaganda through everything from movies to memes: It told stories about how the government of independent Ukraine was insulting the memory of the U.S.S.R., and how it was besmirching the sacrifice of Soviet victory in World War II. Russian propaganda also claimed that independent Ukraine was the descendant of pro-Nazi partisans.

The ultimate aim was to help split those nostalgic for the U.S.S.R. — especially in the south and east of the country — from the rest of Ukraine, paving the way for the invasion in 2022.

Ukrainian academics and historians valiantly fact-checked this propaganda. They showed that many Ukrainian partisans fought against both the Soviets and the Nazis in World War II. But these reality checks struggled to compete with the deeply emotional stories pushed by Russian propaganda, which focused on many people’s family memories of fighting in the Red Army. The idea of a country split between a pro-European, pro-democratic West and a pro-Soviet, Russia-leaning East persisted.

Our polling showed that there was slightly more Soviet nostalgia in the east of the country, but it was not monolithic. Outside of a small sample of die-hard Soviet revisionists, most people had a nuanced view of the U.S.S.R.: They were proud of its achievements in science and social services but ashamed of its curtailment of economic and human rights.

Residents of larger cities in the East shared political values with people in big cities in the West: entrepreneurial, open-minded and keen to defend their freedoms. The vast majority wanted a democratic, European future.

When we conducted focus groups, we found that people across the country became most animated when discussing traumas that were rarely discussed: relatives returning wounded from the disastrous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, families struggling after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.

This pool of resentments and confusion was being exploited by Russian propaganda, which looked to give people a sense of status and grandeur while ignoring the humiliations the Kremlin itself had caused. The power of the propaganda was not in the historical truths (or rather, the lies) it was pushing, but in the emotional relief it provided. Efforts to tackle such lies miss the point. Instead, journalists need to tackle the underlying emotional issues.

In 2019 and 2020, we worked with Ukrainian journalists and filmmakers to create a series of documentaries that told deeply human stories about these less articulated traumas, highlighting the resilience that helped people survive. Some films looked at strikes by miners in east Ukraine against the U.S.S.R.; others explored the lives of Afghan War veterans and the survivors of Chernobyl who had been abandoned by the Soviet regime. 

This kind of storytelling helped build trust: We were able to give people a chance to express and process their pain, weakening the ability of Kremlin propaganda to manipulate it. We avoided top-down narratives and minimized voiceovers that imposed a ‘right’ version of history. Instead, we allowed the people to guide the films themselves and narrate their own experiences.

In testing this content, we found that stories of common traumas and resilience united people across the country. The films earned equal levels of engagement and trust across the East and the West. Journalists can learn from this by tapping into people’s underlying concerns, memories and traumas that, when left unprocessed, are ripe for exploitation by propagandists.

Telling Stories That Resonate

In our “post-truth” age, facts may be jettisoned if they collide with partisan identity. Tribal loyalty often outperforms reality. Instead of just debunking disinformation, journalists must focus on the emotional identities underpinning authoritarian belief systems.

I explored this theory with colleagues at the Universities of Georgetown and North Carolina at Chapel Hill in our work to understand the roots of Russian support for the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. We found that it correlated strongly with an idea of collective identity wherein Russia was perceived as being both superior to others and a victim of global conspiracies: Sixty-five percent of Russians embraced this belief.

Such collective narcissism, as it is known in academic literature, can make any attack or criticism of Russia feel like an assault on Russians themselves. Those who supported the war and preferred this identity model were not worried about Putin’s authoritarian turn: Like most Russians, they wanted a strong hand to lead the country.

Russian independent media has shown evidence of the war crimes that the army has committed in Ukraine, but this has done little to change mainstream support for the war.

When researchers at the Ukrainian cognitive warfare company OpenMinds Institute tested different news stories, they found that the topic that was most effective in decreasing support was not fatalities or the corruption of the elite — it was the rising levels of crime: The Kremlin was releasing violent criminals to serve in the army, and upon their return from the frontlines, they were reportedly committing rapes and murders in Russian towns.

So why were these news stories more impactful? The war’s supporters wanted Putin to restore Russian grandeur. They cared about Putin’s claims that he was ending the chaos from the 1990s and imposing order and strength. The rise of crime, however, meant that the war was bringing instability to the home front, which was anathema to them. Its no surprise that the Kremlin censored crime statistics.

If you are an editor at a media outlet or a creator of digital news content who wants to push back against the power of malign propaganda, you need to make hard choices. The stories that will undermine the power of propaganda may not always be the ones that seem the most morally important or newsworthy. You can still remain true to the journalistic process of research and storytelling, but choose the issues that are more likely to subvert authoritarian narratives.

Showing The Bigger Picture

How journalists choose to communicate can be just as important as what they say. When should they opt for infographics over human interest storytelling, or emotive video over analytical text?

In Italy we worked with the newspaper of record, Corriere della Sera, in 2018 to experiment with different ways to report on the highly controversial topic of migration. As hundreds of thousands of migrants arrived from Africa and the Middle East, right-nationalist parties were decrying an invasion enabled by nongovernmental organizations and liberal parties. Even though the rate of migration had actually gone down at the time, there was so much noise around the issue it gave the impression that the numbers were surging.

Media outlets were faced with a dilemma. They couldn’t ignore the topic, but how could they report on it in a way that would increase trust to reputable sources and avoid inflaming toxic discourse?

Over nine months, we tested how people responded to different types of content on Corriere’s Facebook page. Opinion pieces and hot takes were unsurprisingly the most polarizing. We also found that infographics about migrant numbers and fact-checks did little to change people’s minds. Opponents of migration would simply question the data and trustworthiness of the media. 

Human interest stories about the travails of migrants were also highly polarizing and provoked the highest numbers of negative comments. While this is a go-to genre for journalists to humanize an issue for audiences, it can also elicit strong pushback. Some readers felt like they were being emotionally manipulated and questioned why stories about a select few migrants should change their attitude about the issue at large. And even these stories still gave the sense of an unstoppable flood of migration.

The stories that produced the most civil conversation and higher levels of trust were straightforward pieces we called “articles with context”: They provided background information about why the migration crisis was happening in the first place, analyzing the wars in the Middle East and famines in sub-Saharan Africa, and considered potential interventions tackling the issue at the source.

By giving context, explaining root causes and exploring possible solutions, journalists can relieve the panic-stricken pressure around controversial topics and help people see the bigger picture.

Fostering Civic Agency

The ultimate aim of authoritarian propagandists is often to sow so much doubt and confusion that it leaves people passive and ready to give up their agency to a strongman leader. Conspiracy theory narratives are particularly useful for this. In a world full of hidden plots and unfathomable powers, people are left with a sense of powerlessness. However, our research found that this propaganda tends to fall on fertile ground.

We looked at why people in Ukraine were inclined to believe Kremlin narratives about the West using aid to Ukraine as a means to secretly control its government and steal its land. The reasons people gave in focus groups were telling. They acknowledged that these claims were likely generated by Russia and potentially untrue, but that the narratives still felt right, because they reflected the people’s personal and historical experiences.

For them, Ukraine had always been manipulated by greater powers, and oligarchs, bank ponzi schemes and extractive governments had always made them feel powerless. On the other hand, people who rejected the conspiracy theories argued that even though they weren’t actually sure if they were false, they felt wrong because, in the words of one participant, “I am a self-made person and I control my own life.”

To tackle belief in conspiracy theories, then, debunking individual narratives will not suffice. It requires shifting people’s mindsets from a sense of victimhood and helplessness to one of greater empowerment. Journalists must become more than purveyors of information; through their storytelling and interactions with audiences, they can help foster civic agency.

There are initiatives that already pioneer this. Hearken is an online platform that enables users to help media outlets choose which topics to cover. It’s an example of engagement journalism, an approach that builds trust by encouraging audiences to take part in shaping editorial agendas. This can help improve the public’s relationship with media outlets, which become social services rooted in community needs rather than mere providers of information.

Implementing these principles will require a shift in both mindset and measurement. Journalists and digital creators should consider not only how their content performs in terms of traffic and engagement, but how it unites audiences. They should also develop metrics for increasing trust and fostering constructive dialogue across divides.

I have been working with the nongovernmental organizations Millions of Conversations and More in Common ahead of the 250th anniversary of the U.S., which will take place in 2026, to consider how a divided America — and the media — can explore the truth about its past. Our soon-to-be-published polling and qualitative research point to a way to engage diverse audiences about what they care about, rather than the polarizing debate.

Beneath the aggressive propaganda, people may be more open to exploring the past together. While 49 percent of Republicans said they opposed critical race theory, for example, only 24 percent disagreed with the idea when described without the partisan terminology: that “policies and laws in the past that unfairly disadvantaged some groups may continue to have their effects felt today.”

The problem, then, is not necessarily immutable ideology, but the political discourse that reinforces it. A better media strategy could unpick that by focusing on the stories of inequality while avoiding the polarizing language.

Media reform is a daunting but urgent task that cannot fall to journalists alone. It will require the support of civic-minded content creators and technologists committed to holding power to account and dismantling its propaganda models. Journalism has evolved many times; the next transformation must involve a real shift in how journalists think about their role in protecting democracy — rather than just chronicling its demise.

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