Puncturing the Propaganda Bubble: An Experiment on Attention to News in Russia

Despite the availability of alternative news sources, citizens in autocratic regimes often remain trapped within state propaganda ecosystems. This study investigates whether and how such information bubbles can be punctured through a six-week panel experiment with 1,176 Russian adults. Participants were randomly assigned to analyze the reporting patterns of Russian state television, either in isolation or alongside more balanced, non-government TV content, over first four weeks. Two weeks after the final round of content analysis, we find that deliberate news processing durably improves media literacy and news awareness without changing the perceptions or consumption of state media. Crucially, such deliberate processing also reduces support for the regime. In addition, participants who compared state propaganda to an alternative source increased both their consumption of and the preference for independent media. These findings suggest that thoughtful engagement with news content can weaken authoritarian information control by fostering skepticism toward propaganda and stimulating interest in alternative sources---even without reducing exposure to state media. Subgroup analyses indicate that these effects are concentrated among citizens who already exhibit some skepticism toward state media.