Propaganda in action

Posted By Joshua Keating Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 12:17 PM Share

Chris Blattman flags a fascinating new paper from David Yanagizaw of Stockholm University that attempts to quantify the influence of the infamous Radio Milles Collines during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Here's the abstract:

To identify causal effects, I exploit arguably exogenous variation in radio coverage generated by hills in the line-of-sight between radio transmitters and villages. Consistent with the model under strategic complements in violence, I find that Radio RTLM increased participation in violence, that the effects were decreasing in ethnic polarization, highly non-linear in radio coverage, and decreasing in literacy rates. Finally, the estimated effects are substantial. Complete village adio coverage increased violence by 65 to 77 percent, and a simple counter-factual calculation suggests that approximately 9 percent of the genocide, corresponding to at least 45 000 Tutsi deaths, can be explained by the radio station.

PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images

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