About Me

Do authoritarian regimes erode public support for dissent by framing protesters as foreign agents, and under what conditions is this strategy most effective? While prior research shows that regimes can legitimize repression by portraying protesters as violent or immoral, this paper examines a distinct yet underexplored tactic: discrediting dissent through narratives of foreign interference. I argue that framing protesters as agents of hostile foreign powers activates nationalist sentiment, delegitimizes protest, and increases public support for repression. Using a pre-registered survey experiment conducted among the Chinese public, I test whether exposure to foreign interference narratives lowers support for protests, increases support for state repression, and reduces willingness to protest. Subgroup analyses examine whether effects are strongest among individuals high in nationalism.

Do individuals from authoritarian regimes become more supportive of democracy when they study in democratic countries? The prevailing view holds that exposure to democratic institutions and norms fosters pro-democratic attitudes. However, individual-level tests of this exposure thesis are lacking. This paper challenges the assumption that exposure alone changes political preferences. I argue that international education promotes support for democracy only when students perceive democratic systems as more effective in addressing social and economic problems. I test this argument using an original online survey of Chinese international students across twelve democratic host countries. Results reveal no systematic difference in democratic support between the two groups, but strong associations between perceived economic performance of hosting democracies and democratic attitudes.

Logical fallacies are often embedded in misinformation to mislead the public and manipulate opinion. We introduce a refined, “vaccine-like” intervention: a series of AI-generated short videos that train individuals to recognize and resist three logical fallacies commonly found in misinformation—false causality, hasty generalization, and personal attack. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment (N = 2,416) in China in August 2025. Results show that participants exposed to the logical fallacy training were less likely to endorse related misinformation overall, with particularly strong effects among nationalist participants and those with lower cognitive reflection ability. Our study extends external validity to an understudied authoritarian context.