New project will explore how authoritarian regimes and the media use language to manipulate peoples’ beliefs

Whilst twentieth-century dictators relied on fear and violence to impose their ideologies, many modern autocrats and authoritarian governments rely more heavily on spin - the manipulation of information - to control narratives and influence how they are perceived.

A new project, ‘From Spin to Structure: The Linguistic Mechanisms of Authoritarian Communication’, will ask the question ‘how does spin work through language itself?’

The project is being undertaken by Leverhulme Post-doctoral researcher Dr Sophiko Daraselia in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication.

The project will develop a theoretical framework that explains how authoritarian spin forms a linguistic system. Using post-Soviet countries as a case study, the research will identify recurring linguistic patterns in historical texts which have helped to create legitimacy and credibility for authoritarian regimes.

The analysis will look at language use across two categories: text from governments themselves, and text from pro-government media outlets. This will allow Dr Daraselia to examine how spin is constructed by political elites and then recontextualised by the media to become stronger and more persuasive to the public.

Dr Daraselia said: “Spin is usually studied through a particular event or a political actor, while my research takes a different approach and analyses over 200 million words of government and media texts. This will allow me to trace linguistic patterns of authoritarian narratives that recur across more than a million texts spanning several years. A large, continuous dataset is essential to understand how language changes between quieter times and the periods around major political events, when information manipulation is at its most intense.”