Authoritarian regimes frequently attempt to justify repression by accusing their opponents of violent behavior. Are such claims successful at persuading the public to accept state-sponsored violence, and can these claims be contested effectively by human rights organizations seeking to publicize evidence contradicting the regime’s narrative? To evaluate these questions, we conducted a survey experiment in Egypt using Facebook advertisements to recruit respondents safely. The experiment evaluates the persuasiveness of competing information provided by a human rights organization and the Egyptian security forces at shaping attitudes toward an incident of statesponsored violence in which security forces killed several leaders of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood. We find evidence for the ability of Egyptian security forces to increase support for this repression when they control the narrative about why violence was used. However, we also find that the effects of this propaganda disappear when paired with information from Human Rights Watch that counters the security forces’ justifications. These findings provide experimental evidence that propaganda can help authoritarian regimes to increase public support for repression, but they also indicate that human rights organizations can play some role in mitigating this support when they succeed at disseminating countervalent information in these contexts.

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有争议的镇压叙述：来自塞西埃及的实验证据

威权政权经常试图通过指责反对者的暴力行为来为镇压辩护。这种说法能否成功说服公众接受国家支持的暴力行为，寻求公开与政权叙述相矛盾的证据的人权组织能否有效地反驳这些说法？为了评估这些问题，我们在埃及进行了一项使用 Facebook 广告安全招募受访者的调查实验。该实验评估了人权组织和埃及安全部队提供的竞争信息在塑造对国家支持的暴力事件的态度方面的说服力，在该事件中，安全部队杀害了反对派穆斯林兄弟会的几名领导人。我们发现证据表明，当埃及安全部队控制有关为何使用暴力的叙述时，他们有能力增加对这种镇压的支持。然而，我们也发现，当与来自人权观察的反安全部队理由的信息相结合时，这种宣传的效果就会消失。这些发现提供了实验证据，证明宣传可以帮助威权政权增加公众对镇压的支持，但它们也表明，当人权组织在这些情况下成功传播对立信息时，它们可以在减轻这种支持方面发挥一定作用。我们还发现，当与来自人权观察组织的反对安全部队理由的信息相结合时，这种宣传的效果就会消失。这些发现提供了实验证据，证明宣传可以帮助威权政权增加公众对镇压的支持，但它们也表明，当人权组织在这些情况下成功传播对立信息时，它们可以在减轻这种支持方面发挥一定作用。我们还发现，当与人权观察组织提供的反驳安全部队理由的信息相结合时，这种宣传的效果就会消失。这些发现提供了实验证据，证明宣传可以帮助威权政权增加公众对镇压的支持，但它们也表明，当人权组织在这些情况下成功传播对立信息时，它们可以在减轻这种支持方面发挥一定作用。