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unsettle us. It may seem exaggerated to compare
government distortion in U.S. independent media
with propaganda during the Rwandan genocide.
However, although propaganda and fake news are
not the same, they do hold similarities: both are
methods of distorting the truth for emotional per-
suasion, seeking to drive action.
References
Government Distortion in Independently Owned
Media: Evidence from U.S. Cold War News Cover-
age of Human Rights (with Nancy Qian),
Journal
of the European Economic Association
, 2017,
Vol.15: 2.
Propaganda and Conflict: Evidence from the Rwan-
dan Genocide,
Quarterly Journal of Economics
,
2014, 129(4): 1947-1994.
The Strategic Determinants of U.S. Human Rights
Reporting: Evidence from the Cold War (with
Nancy Qian),
Journal of the European Economic
Association
, P&P, 2009, 7(2-3): 446-457.
Prof. David Yanagizawa-Drott
is Professor
for Development and Emerging Markets at the
Department of Economics, University of Zurich,
and Affiliated Professor at the UBS Center.
Before joining the University of Zurich, he was an
Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard
Kennedy School of Harvard University.
He is a member of the Poverty Action Lab (PAL),
the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of
Development (BREAD), and the National Bureau of
Economic Research (NBER).
His research interests include political economics
and economic development, with current focus on
culture, conflict, and globalization.
Research
Feature