How Propaganda Works in the Digital Era: Soft News as a Gateway

Figures & data

Table 1. Generalized estimating equations predicting monthly popularity of news articles.

	Model one Soft news		Model two Hard news		Model three Xi news
Variables	B (S.E.)	Wald	B (S.E.)	Wald	B (S.E.)	Wald
Media characteristics
Evening (Ref: Dailies)	.55* (.27)	4.10	.19 (.18)	1.02	-.08 (.15)	.27
Metro (Ref: Dailies)	.45* (.22)	4.20	.25 (.24)	1.08	-.09 (.12)	.55
Central (Ref: Local)	-.33 (.49)	.44	-.28 (.49)	.032	1.04*** (.17)	39.30
Media influence
Offline: Circulation	.012*** (.00)	40.09	.009 (.004)	4.84	-.001 (.0008)	1.38
Online: Followers	.089*** (.008)	141.7	.034*** (.008)	18.88	.016*** (.001)	134.60
Popularity lags
Ln(Soft News Popularityj-1)	–	–	.40** (.12)	10.13	.47*** (.05)	92.68
Ln(Hard News Popularityj-1)	.008 (.04)	.03	–	–	.10* (.04)	6.04
Ln(Xi News Popularityj-1)	-.003 (.005)	.33	.01 (.03)	.16	–	–
Content
Video	.001 (.0008)	.57	.003* (.01)	5.49	-.08*** (.008)	100.13
Vote	.008* (.004)	4.31	.03* (.01)	5.14	.07 (.006)	3.14
Link	-.002*** (.0002)	95.19	-.003*** (.01)	29.25	-.008*** (.001)	36.17
Long article	.001 (.0007)	.93	.002 (.001)	2.27	.005 (.003)	3.42
Context
GDP per capita	.006*** (.001)	22.61	.005* (.002)	6.08	.002 (.003)	.71
Offset: Log(Count)	Yes		Yes		Yes
Constant	4.05*** (.29)	197.82	.66 (.62)	1.13	−1.86*** (.15)	156.77
N	8,108		8,108		8,108
Within-subject Covariance Structure: AR(1)

Note: ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05. The dependent variables in three models are Popularity_ij of soft non-Xi news, hard non-Xi news, and Xi news, respectively. Popularity_ij of Xi news, for example, evaluates the gross monthly engagement metrics that newspaper i‘s Xi news attracted in month j. Since the GEEs we use have adjusted for the autocorrelation within the same newspaper, we do not include lagged dependent variables in models.

Figure 1. Time trends of hard news and soft new. Dotted lines represent raw values. Solid lines represent smoothed using a LOWESS approach with a smoother span of 0.1.

Figure 2. Time trends of soft news by media types.

Figure 3. Time trends of Xi news by media types.

Figure 4. Average and maximum popularity of different types of news.