Sarah Langlotz

(University of Goettingen)

will give a presentation on

Terrorist Propaganda

Abstract: This paper examines the influence of Islamic State (IS) propaganda on public opinion in Afghanistan. We leverage granular survey data to investigate how plausibly exogenous exposure to IS content influences views towards local and international forces. We employ two distinct designs. First, we leverage high-frequency time variation in IS content and survey data collection to investigate how global videos distributed digitally impact local attitudes. Second, we exploit plausibly exogenous signal penetration of a prominent IS radio tower in Nangahar province constructed during the sample period to evaluate how analog transmissions impact civilian preferences in Eastern Afghanistan. Our findings suggest that thematic variation in content and timing matters.

(Joint work with Travers Child, Rossella De Sabbata, Kai Gehring, and Austin Wright).