Priming with Fear: Putin’s Manipulation of Domestic Public Support

Abstract Manipulative rhetoric has long proven to be an effective tool for political leaders seeking to influence social behavior. Yet, the nuances of these manipulative tactics remain understudied in autocracies. Using the Russian case under Vladimir Putin’s presidency, I test and show how priming and terror management theories explain Putin’s high approval rating under economic circumstances where research would otherwise expect approval to wane. Specifically, I employ text-as-data methods to identify Putin’s priming emphasis on an existential threat emanating from Western countries. I furthermore argue and find that this “external threat” priming tactic utilized by Putin helps him to instill existential fear among citizens. This, in turn, stimulates narratives of national unification and deflects people’s attention away from Russia’s economic decline. In leveraging my text-as-data measures within a series of secondary statistical analyses, I then determine that (i) while external threat priming does not affect public approval alone, (ii) such threat narratives, nevertheless, allow Putin to maintain an especially high approval rating during times of domestic economic turmoil.