“It’s Not That Simple, We Don’t Know the Whole Truth”: The Effects of Pseudo Fact Checking in Wartime Russia

While authoritarian governments increasingly use pseudo fact checking to discredit rivals, research on this strategy in autocracies remains scarce. This study addresses this gap with a preregistered online experiment conducted in authoritarian Russia during the invasion of Ukraine. Although isolating citizens from alternative information in saturated media environments is impossible, we argue that propaganda can counter this threat through pseudo fact checking. The experiment shows that pseudo fact checking undermines the credibility of alternative information and creates uncertainty that is particularly pronounced among regime critics, preventing them from blaming the regime for its policies. Repressive autocracies incentivize avoiding a critical stance. While this interpretation remains tentative, we argue that pseudo fact checking may, by inducing uncertainty, provide regime critics with additional justifications to avoid judgment. These findings highlight how authoritarian propaganda adapts to new media environments and have important policy implications, highlighting the potentially adverse effects of counterpropaganda campaigns.