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Survey studies show that popular support for democracy is strong in democratic and non-democratic countries. Naturally, the question is if democracy actually means the same thing in different linguistic, cultural, and political contexts. Mass media is often mentioned as decisive in forming citizens' understandings of democracy, but the media discourse is rarely in focus in comparative studies on popular conceptions of democracy. This article contributes to the debate by analysing data collected from online media in 93 countries. By utilizing tools from natural language processing, we provide new insights based on methods that are both extensive, flexible and cost-efficient. Our analysis shows that the media discourse revolves around democracy as governance, as outcomes and as values, but that these abstract understandings have additional dimensions. Our main contributions are three: (i) we show that the media discourse is related to popular understandings of democracy; (ii) our results indicate that there are common denominators of how the D-word is discussed in media across the globe, but when analysing the dimensions in more detail, common denominators are few and (iii) by relating democracy to everyday politics, media seems to legitimize any regime as democratic rather than being a beacon for liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nostalgic rhetoric has proven effectiveness among frustrated voters in democratic elections. Studies have introduced various measures for nostalgic sentiment, but the debate remains with regard to finding a suitable instrument. Using a social media approach, we propose a method to identify nostalgic rhetoric and investigate observable patterns, leveraging the Philippine presidential election in May 2022. We conduct text-as-data analysis and investigate sub-national and individual variation in nostalgia for Ferdinand Marcos Sr. Our approach, which combines machine learning and human labelling, identifies a significant share of tweets about Marcos Jr. as having nostalgia for Marcos Sr. Using these nostalgic tweets as a measure for authoritarian nostalgia, we explore regional variation in Marcos nostalgia across Philippines' provinces and run statistical analysis with existing predictors for Marcos nostalgia. Our analysis shows that voters in provinces with higher support for Rodrigo Duterte in the 2016 election are more likely to post nostalgic tweets. We further explore individual variation and find that individual accounts that express negative assessment of their current status are more likely to use nostalgic rhetoric. Combined results from this paper provide among the first empirical analysis of large-scale data on how voters discuss and distribute nostalgic rhetoric for a former dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Adorno's thought for business ethicists working in the critical tradition by showing how his critique of modern social life anticipated, and offers continuing illumination of, recent technological transformations of capitalism. It develops and extrapolates Adorno's thought regarding three central spheres of modern society, which have seen radical changes in light of recent technological developments: work, in which employee monitoring has become ever more sophisticated and intrusive; leisure consumption, in which the algorithmic developments of the culture industry have paved the way for entertainment products to dominate us; and political discourse, in which social media has exacerbated the anti-democratic tendencies Adorno warned of in the mid-twentieth century. We conclude by presenting, as a rejoinder to these developments, the contours of an Adornian ethics of resistance to the reification and dehumanisation of such developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that many contemporary challenges to democracy can be traced back to how political organizations compete for attention. We begin with the idea that these organizations appeal for attention both by mobilizing their own members, and also through media that reaches a wider audience, such as social media and mass media. But since many organizations are competing for the limited attention of this wider audience, they all have an incentive to send "too many" and "too sensational" messages. This overwhelms the audience and leads to polarization and populism. Our article describes the conditions necessary for this "tragedy of the commons" to occur and also reviews empirical evidence demonstrating that these conditions are met. We find that social media is not a necessary condition for the model, but does accelerate it. We conclude that Elinor Ostrom's theories of the commons are important for understanding political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of social media during the 2021 Mexican legislative election. Political candidates were contacted through the email addresses they had listed and sent a questionnaire to fill out. Thus, the research is based on original data directly collected from political candidates. Political candidates commented on their use of social media during the election campaign. The research used closed questions. The assumption was that political candidates would use social media if they felt that the benefits outweighed the costs associated with managing social media accounts. The utility of social media can also lie in the opportunity to gain new votes. The results show that political candidates used social media more if they perceived that it was being used in their constituency. If few voters in a constituency use social media, then the potential utility of using social media declines. Furthermore, they used them more if they perceived that from an economic point of view, managing an account and sending a message were not that costly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The personalization of politics (the process of politicians' strengthening at the expense of political parties) has long been studied. This study focuses on online personalism in the consumption of political parties and their leaders on Twitter and Facebook and aims to find its explaining factors. Following the normalization/equalization debate, it sets hypotheses regarding the relationship between variables from offline to online personalized politics. Using multilevel analysis of Facebook and Twitter data of more than 140 parties from 25 democracies, it finds that the leaders' position significantly affects online personalism in most of the consumption aspects of social media. It also shows that country's offline personalization, leader's tenure, party populism, party age, party's governmental status, vote share, and the leadership selection method have effects on some of the indicators for online personalism on the consumption side. It concludes that offline political power is reflected online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how incidental exposure to political information on social media can lead to political tolerance toward minorities by facilitating exposure to pro-minority content on social media and perceived threat of minorities conditions this mechanism. Using survey data from a non-Western democracy, the study finds that exposure to incidental exposure to political information on social media can propel pro-minority content exposure on social media, fostering increased political tolerance of religious minorities. It demonstrates the democratic role of incidental exposure on social media in fostering political tolerance toward minorities via increasing exposure to pro-minority content. However, the positive indirect effect is significant only for those perceiving low to medium threat levels from religious minorities. The study discusses the democratic implications of the findings and presents the limitations and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines automated scraping of Weibo data and critical discourse analysis to examine the online anti-surrogacy sentiments in China, and finds three nodal points in the interlocking anti-surrogacy discourses. Firstly, through a heterosexual male persona, anti-surrogacy sentiments argue that the legalization of surrogacy would reduce the number of women of marriageable age. Secondly, radical feminist voices argued that surrogacy would make women suffer more in the current gender relations. Finally, gay men were singled out and blamed for exploiting women's body. Through a discussion of these three voices, we argue that despite their apparent diversity, they are fundamentally conditioned and restricted by the state-corporate power axis in China. As a result, they perpetuate current structures of gender and sexuality inequality, instead of engendering meaningful discussions and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Men often dominate political discussion on social media. Our research investigates when women's political discussion increases to close the gender gap in political discussion. We argue that women's political discussion will increase when gender is a highly salient political topic. These increases in women's political discussion will most likely occur among "resource-poor" women and women of color who often lack the conventional resources thought to facilitate political discussion, such as education and income. We analyzed the gendered dynamics of political discussion on Twitter using a novel dataset of tweets spanning a four-year period before and after the 2016 presidential election—a period when gender and women's issues shifted from having a low level of salience to a high level of salience. We found that women and men engage in political discussion at comparable rates regardless of their resource levels and during periods of high-gender salience and low-gender salience. We also found that both women of color and white women increase their political discussion during times of high-gender salience relative to low-gender salience. Our results show that social media is a platform that can close the gender gap in political discussion between women and men regardless of women's resource levels or the salience of gender in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media are seen as a catalyst for personalized politics, and social media activity has, therefore, been used as an indicator of personalized representation. However, this may lead to an overestimation because politicians can behave as party soldiers even on their personal social media platforms. This article proposes that we need to examine the content of politicians' social media communication to evaluate levels of personalized representation and understand the drivers behind it. Based on a full year's Facebook activity of Danish members of Parliament including 28,000 updates, this study documents two main results. First, politicians do use Facebook to manage their personal image, but they also attend to their party duties. Attending to content suggests that activity measures overestimate personalized representation by at least 20 percentage points. Second, in contrast to expectations, mainly electorally secure politicians personalize communication on social media, which suggests that vote getters may enjoy more party duty leeway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media has transformed electoral politics and allows campaigns to micro-target supporters. However, little is known about the effectiveness of political ads on social media, particularly those that appeal for money. We study the fundraising effects of ad campaigns sponsored by a well-funded Super PAC, The Lincoln Project. Our model includes 100s of millions of ad impressions targeting Facebook users in the 50 states, plus D.C., over 308 days in 2020. We coded ads for tone and fundraising appeals and find that the most effective ads are those that directly appeal for money, while ads that use negativity are associated with a small, positive effect. Ads that include both negativity and fundraising appeals are associated with the most money: each impression yields an additional $0.52 in itemized donations (campaign contributions). The results confirm what previous research on campaign giving has found— people tend to give money to campaigns when they are asked to—and show how digital advertising influences political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media--and, in particular, social media influencers--are playing an increasingly central role in shaping public opinion on a variety of issues. The political sphere is no exception. In response to the impact that social media influencers have on citizens' political views and voting behaviors, political parties adapt their messages and policies during election campaigns. Media outlets, too, faced with competition for readership from social media, are adjusting their news coverage. To analyze the nature and extent of the impact of social media on parties' policies, media outlets' news reports, and citizens' opinions, we used a game theoretical model of electoral competition involving four key stakeholders--citizens, political parties, media outlets, and social media influencers. Our results show that with social media, parties' policy positions become more moderate while media outlets' editorial positions become more extreme. We also show that citizens' opinions may become more polarized when the influencers' true editorial positions are more homogeneous as a result of increased information distortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article explores Bitchute, a video-hosting platform associated with the Far/Alt Right, with the aim of understanding how it reconfigures political communication and the digital public sphere. Methodologically, the article employs the walkthrough method and non-participant observation to identify the main features and functionalities offered to users. These include a set of values that prioritise creators, an algorithmic organisation that keeps users engaged with a single creator channel rather than with the same topic across channels; and embedded buttons for tips and pledges for creators enabling them to directly monetise their content. The content posted on Bitchute tends to coalesce around politicised cultural issues. It is noteworthy that although Bitchute hosts some advertising, it does not use data for microtargeting and in general makes limited use of user data. We interpret these findings as suggesting that Bitchute constitutes a media infrastructure that encourages, incentivises and sustains microcelebrities of the Far/Alt Right, who act as ideology entrepreneurs. Bitchute can therefore be seen as an infrastructure for the multiplication/sustenance of ideological entrepreneurs/political influencers who vie for the attention and money of far-right publics. If we can speak of a structural transformation of the public sphere associated with Alt Tech, our discussion of Bitchute suggests that this takes the form of a political media infrastructure that enables the continued existence and consolidation of a new type of political actor, the ideology entrepreneur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dirasat: Educational Sciences is the property of University of Jordan and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Regarding the unique features of Instagram and Telegram and the novelty of this phenomenon, many members of society have not been able to accurately understand this space, and their lack of adequate familiarity has impacted the political, social, economic, cultural, and security spheres. Therefore, the present study, with a descriptive correlation method, aimed to examine the relationship between Instagram and Telegram usage and the security and social trust of fourth-generation users in District 12 of Tehran. The study population consisted of users aged 16 to 19 in District 12 of Tehran, with a sample size of 380 determined using the Cochran formula. Survey research was employed for data collection, and a researcher-designed questionnaire was used as the research tool. The results indicated that the level and duration of Instagram and Telegram usage significantly affect security and social trust. Specifically, a positive and significant correlation was observed between social and cultural content and security and social trust, while a negative and significant correlation was found between economic and security content and social trust. However, no significant relationship was found between political content on Instagram and Telegram and social trust and security. Ultimately, social media has significantly impacted the security and social trust of young users in Tehran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct the first large-scale study of image-based political misinformation on Facebook. We collect 13,723,654 posts from 14,532 pages and 11,454 public groups from August through October 2020, posts that together account for nearly all engagement of U.S. public political content on Facebook. We use perceptual hashing to identify duplicate images and computer vision to identify political figures. Twenty-three percent of sampled political images (N  = 1,000) contained misinformation, as did 20% of sampled images (N  = 1,000) containing political figures. We find enormous partisan asymmetry in misinformation posts, with right-leaning images 5–8 times more likely to be misleading, but little evidence that misleading images generate higher engagement. Previous scholarship, which mostly cataloged links to noncredible domains, has ignored image posts which account for a higher volume of misinformation. This research shows that new computer-assisted methods can scale to millions of images, and help address perennial and long-unanswered calls for more systematic study of visual political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the recent surge of global populism, this article explores the relationship between Internet/social media and support for populist parties by focusing on the structure of the online marketplace. We argue that structure shapes digital networks' incentives in terms of the content they favor, and marketing strategies they employ to distribute content on a mass scale. Specifically, concentrated/oligopolistic markets mean powerful digital entities that can leverage the regulatory process—thereby weakening constraints and incentivizing consumption/profit above all else. Consequently, these entities can freely favor more incendiary/attention-generating content, and use their outsized influence to saturate the online marketplace with targeted advertising—all of which can amplify the diffusion of populist rhetoric and intensify support bases. Using original data on Internet ownership concentration, social media user-traffic, and populist party vote share in 34 democracies, our findings suggest that concentration of Internet ownership and online audiences each contribute to rising support for populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores and discusses the impact of political talks as a mediator of social media use on online political participation. It uses a survey method to collect data on college students in West Java concerning the 2019 Indonesian presidential election, and a total of 1,050 students filled out the questionnaires. The results showed that online political talk served as a mediator instead of face-to-face political talks. Furthermore, politics and social media use positively affected online political participation. Concerning the implication of this study, social media can be a means of political discussion to increase participation among youth, especially college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyze discourses around the introduction of Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Code – new changes in laws regulating new media companies in India, and how these discourses inform the imaginations about the rights and duties of corporations and citizens in the country. I argue that though these guidelines were brought into effect through legal and juridical channels, they were reified through state-led and user-generated political discourse, constituting bottom-up imaginaries about the governance of social media platforms. To comprehensively analyze the impact of the guidelines regulating social media companies, this article argues for the need to examine the interlinkages between online discourse and policy regulations at three levels of operation: (a) the government's imagination for the country's digital future, (b) quotidian online discourse reifying the politics of regulation and (c) the dominant imagination of social media as socio-political actors responsible for upholding democracy, the freedom of speech of users, and dissent. Based on the findings and analysis, I argue that the regulation of social media platforms in India demonstrates reconfiguring relationships between social media companies, emerging forms of nationalism, and the government's expectations of compliance from social media companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the potential impact of social media algorithms on juror bias and the legal procedure voir dire or jury selection. Topics discussed include the capability of algorithmic technology to detect biases of potential jurors, the principal responsibility of an impartial jury, and the political and social preferences of individuals that social media companies can track and collect based on Internet browsing behaviors.

Algorithms play a critical role in steering online attention on social media. Many have alleged that algorithms can perpetuate bias. This study audited shadowbanning, where a user or their content is temporarily hidden on Twitter. We repeatedly tested whether a stratified random sample of American Twitter accounts (n ≈ 25,000) had been subject to various forms of shadowbans. We then identified the type of user and tweet characteristics that predict a shadowban. In general, shadowbans are rare. We found that accounts with bot-like behavior were more likely to face shadowbans, while verified accounts were less likely to be shadowbanned. The replies by Twitter accounts that posted offensive tweets and tweets about politics (from both the left and the right) were more likely to be downtiered. The findings have implications for algorithmic accountability and the design of future audit studies of social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podcasts are an increasingly popular medium, however, their potential for political listening remains largely unexplored. This article examines the opportunities and challenges that podcasts provide in literally hearing voices. It analyses the globally influential Joe Rogan Experience podcast to consider its acoustic impact on audiences. It finds that audiences are highly attuned to the aural nature of this platform and can listen with a critical ear. This technology holds the capacity for challenging power in its production processes outside the state and market, its shift to informal speech and its intimate nature. Ultimately, this article argues that paying attention to sound through podcasts can extend our understanding of political listening and the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operatives working for the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) infiltrated social media with the goal of disrupting the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We investigate how these operatives or "trolls" leveraged partisan political identities in discussing presidential candidates and parties on Twitter. Adopting a social identity lens, we conceptualize retweeting troll content as a form of identity performance and examine the message properties that led troll tweets to resonate among Twitter users. The findings highlight the importance of partisan trolls' persistence in tweeting about candidates and parties as well as their discussion of the political outgroup and incivility in the form of name-calling. The results collectively indicate that Twitter users were sensitive to messages generated by IRA trolls and responded in a manner consistent with identity performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our article describes how users' decisions to share content alter the frequencies of the frame elements observed by social media peers. Changes in the frequency of distinct frame elements shape how individuals interpret, classify and define situations and events. We label this process Network Activated Frames (NAFs). We test the mechanisms behind NAF with an original image-based conjoint design that replicates network activation in three surveys. Results show that partisans share more content than nonpartisans and that their preferences differ from those of nonpartisans. Our findings show that a network of peers with cross-cutting ideological preferences may be perceived as a bubble if partisans amplify content they like at higher rates. Beginning with fully randomized probabilities, the output from our experiments is more extreme than the preferences of the median users, as partisans activate more and different frame elements than nonpartisans. We implement the experiments in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens turn increasingly to social media to get their political information. However, it is currently unclear whether using these platforms actually makes them more politically knowledgeable. While some researchers claim that social media play a critical role in the learning of political information within the modern media environment, others posit that the great potential for learning about politics on social media is rarely fulfilled. The current study tests which of these conflicting theoretical claims is supported by the existing empirical literature. A preregistered meta-analysis of 76 studies (N  =   442,136) reveals no evidence of any political learning on social media in observational studies, and statistically significant but substantively small increases in knowledge in experiments. These small-to-nonexistent knowledge gains are observed across social media platforms, types of knowledge, countries, and periods. Our findings suggest that the contribution of social media toward a more politically informed citizenry is minimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online platforms can help public information campaigns reach target audiences who are unlikely to engage with content distributed via traditional media. This paper adds to this emergent literature, as the first study of the Ending the Harm campaign, which is designed to change public discourse about paramilitary-style attacks in Northern Ireland. Campaign effects were explored through interviews (N = 7) conducted with key stakeholders, as well as the results of a quantitative survey of residents (N = 805) in areas most affected by these attacks. Results indicate that exposure to the ETH advertisements correlated with a belief that PSAs were unjustified. Platforms like Snapchat helped the campaign reach younger demographics (16–34 years old). Nevertheless, it was unclear whether self-reported changes in attitude toward PSAs would lead to sustained behavioral changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unprecedented street protests brought down Mubarak's government and ushered in an era of competition between three rival political groups in Egypt. Using daily variation in the number of protesters, we document that more intense protests are associated with lower stock market valuations for firms connected to the group currently in power relative to non-connected firms, but have no impact on the relative valuations of firms connected to rival groups. These results suggest that street protests serve as a partial check on political rent-seeking. General discontent expressed on Twitter predicts protests but has no direct effect on valuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study incorporates the examination of citizenship norms in testing the Citizen Communication Mediation Model (CCMM) in China, exploring to what extent online political expression mediates the impact of informational use of social media on offline civic engagement and how beliefs in citizenship norms moderate the CCMM. Results based on a two-wave panel survey among a national sample of 1,199 Chinese adults provide strong support for the CCMM in the Chinese context. In addition, embracing the democratic citizenship norm significantly enhances the CCMM effect, whereas embracing the pro-government citizenship norm that encourages pro-government speech does not show the same effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, an unprecedented number of American Muslims ran for public office, including the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. This study analyzes the anti-Muslim/anti-immigrant Twitter discourse surrounding Ilhan Omar, one of these two successful candidates. The results identify three categories of accounts that linked Omar to clusters of accounts that shaped the Islamophobia/xenophobic narrative: Influencers, Amplifiers, and Icons. This cadre of accounts played a synergistic and disproportionate role in raising the level of hate speech as a vast network containing a high proportion of apparently inauthentic accounts magnified the messages generated by a handful of provocateurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the participation of Christians in the public protests against the Cuban government which started on July 11, 2021. Topics explored include the arrest and imprisonment of sisters María Cristina Garrido and Angélica Garrido for their activism, the use of social media platforms by Cuban believers to speak against police violence, and the humanitarian assistance extended by several Christian organizations for the benefit of affected Cubans.

Prior research suggests that Twitter users in the United States are more politically engaged and more partisan than the American citizenry, who are generally characterized by low levels of political knowledge and disinterest in political affairs. This study seeks to understand this disconnect by conducting an observational analysis of the most popular accounts on American Twitter. We identify opinion leaders by drawing random samples of ordinary American Twitter users and observing whom they follow. We estimate the ideological leaning and political relevance of these opinion leaders and crowdsource estimates of perceived ideology. We find little evidence that American Twitter is as politicized as it is made out to be, with politics and hard news outlets constituting a small subset of these opinion leaders. Ordinary Americans are significantly more likely to follow nonpolitical opinion leaders on Twitter than political opinion leaders. We find no evidence of polarization among these opinion leaders either. While a few political professional categories are more polarized than others, the overall polarization dissipates when we factor in the rate at which the opinion leaders tweet: a large number of vocal nonpartisan opinion leaders drowns out the partisan voices on the platform. Our results suggest that the degree to which Twitter is political has likely been overstated in the past. Our findings have implications about how we use Twitter and social media, in general, to represent public opinion in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the prevalence and correlates of political incivility among Congressional candidates in the 2020 election cycle, focusing specifically on which types of candidates were most likely to use uncivil language in their online communications and the self-reinforcing nature of incivility between candidates. Based on a comprehensive analysis of more than two million tweets sent by major party candidates in the 2020 House and Senate races, we conclude that several individual and electoral factors were influential in driving candidate incivility. Specifically, Republicans, challengers, and candidates in less competitive races were more likely to use uncivil rhetoric. Women, racial minorities, and candidates running in open seat races were less prone to incivility. We also find that incivility begets incivility, with candidates whose opponents used higher rates of incivility also being more likely to use incivility themselves. Uncivil tweets were also found to generate significantly more likes and retweets, suggesting that incivility is a viable means of driving engagement for candidates. These results shed light on the factors behind incivility among political elites, as well as highlight the feedback effects which contribute to a self-reinforcing rise in political incivility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When international conflict causes an authoritarian leader's popularity to soar, extant theories lead us to treat such "rallying" as sincere preference change, the product of surging patriotism or cowed media. This study advances a theory of less-than-fully sincere rallying more appropriate for nondemocratic settings, characterizing it as at least partly reflecting cascading dissembling driven by social desirability concerns. The identification strategy combines a rare nationally representative rally-spanning panel survey with a list experiment and econometric analysis. This establishes that three quarters of those who rallied to Putin after Russia annexed Crimea were engaging in at least some form of dissembling and that this rallying developed as a rapid cascade, with social media joining television in fueling perceptions this was socially desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]