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CPSXXX10.1177/0010414020957672Comparative Political StudiesWang and Huang

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Comparative Political Studies

When “Fake News”

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414020957672
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Government Denials in
an Authoritarian Country

Chengli Wang1 and Haifeng Huang2

Abstract
Governments around the world, particularly authoritarian ones, often deny
inconvenient or unfavorable information, calling it fake news or false rumor,
and yet what was denied often turns out to be true eventually. How will
citizens react when the initial “fake news” is verified to be real? What are
the consequences of false government denials on government credibility
and citizen satisfaction? Using a survey experiment in China and a follow-up
survey, we find that citizens can be persuaded by the authorities’ denials
and reduce their belief in a piece of news that has been declared “fake.”
But when the denied news turns out to be real, citizens will reduce their
belief not only in the denial at hand but also in a similar denial in the future
and reduce their satisfaction with the government. Thus, false denials have
both immediate and lasting effects on government credibility and can erode
citizen satisfaction with the government.

Keywords
rumor, denial, policy instability, authoritarian politics, fake news

1
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China
2
University of California at Merced, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Haifeng Huang, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California at Merced,
5200 N Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343, USA.
Email: hhuang24@ucmerced.edu
2 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

Introduction
Governments around the world, particularly authoritarian ones, often deny
unfavorable news or inconvenient information, calling it fake news or false
rumor, and yet what was denied often turns out to be true eventually. For
instance, when Dr. Li Wenliang warned of a SARS-like disease in the early
stage of the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak, he, along with several other
doctors in China, was reprimanded by the authorities for rumor-mongering
(New York Times, 2020). A few months later, amid the global pandemic, he
was officially recognized as a martyr (Su, 2020). For another example, in
February 2012, when Wang Lijun, a top aide to a member of the Chinese
Communist Party’s Political Bureau who was at the time contending for
China’s top leadership position, defected to a US Consulate and was then
taken away by China’s state security personnel, the municipal government
where Mr. Wang held his position as a vice mayor denied intense internet
discussions about his whereabouts and stated instead that Mr. Wang was
simply undergoing a “vacation-style treatment” for health reasons (Branigan,
2012). The statement made “vacation-style treatment” an instant hit meme
on the Chinese internet (Chin & Spegele, 2012).
This phenomenon also exists in democracies. US President Donald Trump,
for example, is well known for frequently branding unfavorable media reports
as “fake news,” but those reports are often validated later (Farhi, 2019;
Rogers, 2019). His popularization of the term, in fact, has led leaders around
the world, including those from Hungary, Poland, Russia, Syria, and
Venezuela, to follow suit and similarly attack inconvenient information and
media scrutiny as fake news (Erlanger, 2017; Gabbatt, 2018).
How will citizens react when a piece of “fake news” is demonstrated to
be real? What are the consequences of false government denials on govern-
ment credibility and citizen satisfaction with the government? A rapidly
growing literature has examined the psychological foundations of belief in
rumor, fake news, and misinformation1 (Flynn et al., 2017; Pennycook &
Rand, 2019), their spread through the internet and social media (Grinberg
et al., 2019; Guess et al., 2019; Vosoughi et al., 2018), their political and
social impacts in various contexts (Fine & Ellis, 2010; Fine & Turner, 2001;
Huang, 2017), and strategies for and effectiveness of correcting misinfor-
mation (Aird et al., 2018; Berinsky, 2017; Clayton et al., in press). Very
little work, however, has explored what will happen if an initial piece of
“fake news” is later proven be real and the authorities’ denial turns out to be
fake. We build on Huang’s (2017) analysis of the effects of rumors and
rebuttals in an authoritarian setting to address these very questions about
false denials.
Wang and Huang 3

Although the issue of false government denials is perhaps relevant for all
countries around the world, it is particularly important in authoritarian societ-
ies, since their relative lack of free news media and organizations that can
provide independent information and fact-checking means not only that
rumors and speculation are particularly prevalent (Kapferer, 1990; Sunstein
& Vermeule, 2009), but also that the authorities are more tempted to use the
“fake news” label to suppress discordant voices, criticism, or other inconve-
nient information. The ability to label claims and explanations that the
authorities deem objectionable as fake has long been regarded as a power
(Foucault, 1980; Levack, 2015). Because the revelation of the falsehood of
government denials could erode the government’s power, it is important to
investigate its consequences, particularly in the authoritarian setting.
We address these issues using an online survey experiment (wave 1) and a
follow-up survey (wave 2) in China. Both waves used online rumors that
were initially denied by local governments but later turned out to be true.
Unlike much of the existing literature that focuses on the short-term effects
of (mis)information and corrections on public opinion and political attitudes,
our study was designed to examine not only the immediate effects of govern-
ment denials, but also whether the revelation about the falsehood of govern-
ment denials has lasting effects on how the public views the authorities.
Specifically, in the survey experiment, one group of respondents was
exposed to a rumor about the government’s new automobile registration pol-
icy, an issue of common interest due to prevalent traffic congestion in Chinese
urban areas. The second group was exposed to the same rumor and then the
government’s denial of the rumor. The third group was exposed to the rumor,
the government’s denial, and then a news event in which the initially denied
rumor was verified to be true. In the follow-up survey, which occurred about
3 weeks after the initial survey experiment, respondents in the third group of
the first wave (those who received verification of the initial rumor) were re-
enrolled to observe another rumor and the government’s denial. For compari-
son, a brand-new group of respondents was also recruited in the second wave
and exposed to the same rumor and denial as the re-enrolled respondents
from the first wave.
We find that citizens can be persuaded by the authorities’ labeling of a
piece of news as fake and decrease their belief in the news, which suggests
why governments like to use the label of fake news. But when the govern-
ment’s denial is revealed to be false and the original news was proven to be
real, citizens will not only decrease their belief in the current government
denial, but also decrease their belief in a similar government denial in the
future. Moreover, such an experience with the government’s lack of credibil-
ity will negatively affect people’s general satisfaction with the government in
4 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

the relevant issue area. In other words, government denials that are revealed
to be false will not only have an immediate effect on public opinion, but citi-
zens’ awareness of the government’s lack of credibility can persist and con-
tinue to shape their views on the government in the future. Matching and
sensitivity analysis show that these results are robust with regards to func-
tional form assumptions and potential unobserved confounders. Thus, the
authorities’ branding of news as fake may erode the public’s long-term politi-
cal trust and satisfaction with the government, once the falsehood of the deni-
als is revealed.
The article proceeds as follows. In the next section we discuss our theo-
retical expectations and related literature. We then explain the design of our
two-wave study. The ensuing two sections report results from the two waves,
which respectively show the immediate and lasting effects of the govern-
ment’s false denials. The concluding section discusses the implications of the
study, its limitations, and potential future research.

Rumor, Denial, and Verification

Existing research on rumor and fake news focuses on demonstrably false
information, due to its negative impact on public anxiety, social relations, and
politics (Berinsky, 2017; DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007; Fine & Ellis, 2010; Flynn
et al., 2017; Huang, 2017). This is especially the case given the prevalence
and potential influence of misinformation in recent elections and political
conflicts around the world (Grinberg et al., 2019; Vosoughi et al., 2018). But
the prevalence of false rumors in society also gives politicians and authorities
a cover for denying inconvenient information as “fake news,” hoping that
this will reduce public belief in the information. Our study departs from the
existing research and focuses on the authorities’ denials of real news as fake.
Do such denials work, and what will happen when a denial is disproven and
the original “rumor” or “fake news” is shown to be true?
When citizens first learn of the authorities’ denial of a piece of uncon-
firmed news or rumor, they do not have evidence about the veracity of the
rumor or the falsehood of the denial. The existing research suggests that
under such circumstances a denial is likely to reduce the public’s belief in
the rumor (Bordia et al., 2000; DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007), particularly when
the denial or rebuttal is viewed as having high message quality or source
credibility (Berinsky, 2017). For example, Huang’s (2017) study of anti-
government rumors and official rebuttals in China shows that simple denials
of the rumors without much detailed information or explanation can still
reduce the public’s belief in those rumors, even though people’s trust in the
government on related policy issues may not recover as a result of the official
Wang and Huang 5

denials. We therefore expect that the government’s denial of a rumor related

to government policies will reduce people’s belief in that rumor. This will
occur even if the denial is actually false, since at the time of the denial the
falsehood is not yet known.
But when actual events show that the government’s denial is false, natu-
rally people’s belief in the original rumor should increase, relative to when
the rumor was denied. Therefore, we expect that the verification of a rumor
will immediately increase people’s belief in it relative to the denial condition
and reduce their belief in the government’s denial.
The most crucial question of our research is whether the verification of an
initial rumor and the revelation of the falsehood of the government’s denial
will have lasting effects on government credibility and citizens’ attitudes
toward the government. More specifically, when what was declared by the
government to be “fake news” turns out to be real, will citizens still believe
in similar government denials in the future? And will the revelation of the
government’s falsehood affect citizen satisfaction in the relevant policy area?
Naturally, we expect the government will lose some of its credibility once
its denial is revealed to be false and the original rumor confirmed to be true.2
But whether this effect will endure is not clear. A large literature has shown
that the effects of the memory-based mode of persuasive communication on
people’s opinions are short-lived (Cook & Flay, 1978; Klapper, 1960; Petty
& Wegener, 1998), and that misinformation can persist even after correction
(Nyhan & Reifler, 2010; Thorson, 2016). With a few exceptions for topics
such as ideological warfare between parties (Zaller, 1996), uncivil political
discourses (Mutz & Reeves, 2005), and war-time propaganda, most persua-
sive effects of media dissipate quickly (Hill et al., 2013). For example,
research on the ways voters respond to political campaign advertising finds
that television and radio commercials have strong initial effects on voters’
preference shift, but such effects decay rapidly (Gerber et al., 2011). While
some small effects may survive several weeks, most persuasion effects have
half-lives of 1 or 2 days and no discernible pattern of long-term survival.
Even opinion changes derived from strong arguments tend to decay within a
few weeks (Chong & Druckman, 2010), although if the political communica-
tion is continuously present, it may produce a small amount of durable change
that, over a long period of time, adds up to a sizable effect (Hill et al., 2013).
However, seeing the government’s active denial proven to be flat-out false
by reality should be a vivid and drastic experience for citizens. It should thus
be one of the areas where the memory’s effects may be relatively long-last-
ing, at least if the government’s denials in the future are similar to the previ-
ous denial that has been proved to be false, so individuals will be clearly
reminded of what they had experienced previously. It will also help if the
6 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

issues at hand are not about people’s fundamental world views or cultural
identity (Cook & Lewandowsky, 2011; Nyhan & Reifler, 2010). Our expecta-
tion is therefore that an experience of seeing the government’s denial proven
to be false will have a somewhat lasting effect on people’s trust in the govern-
ment. Specifically, the experience of seeing a government denial proven to be
false and a piece of “fake news” proven to be true will make people believe
similar government denials less than those without such an experience, at
least within a few weeks.
The above theoretical expectations focus on individuals’ belief and accep-
tance of the factual content of rumors and government denials. Another
important issue is how false government denials may affect citizens’ satisfac-
tion with the government, beyond their factual belief of the government’s
claims. Recent research has shown that people’s acceptance of factual state-
ments and corrections does not necessarily imply changes in political atti-
tudes: Being persuaded of the veracity or falsehood of a government or
politician’s specific claims often does not change people’s trust in or evalua-
tion of the government/politician, especially if the factual corrections are
simple denials without much detailed evidence or argument (Huang, 2017;
Nyhan et al., in press). Accordingly, we do not expect the government’s sim-
ple denial of the automobile policy rumor in our experiment to have signifi-
cant impact on the respondents’ satisfaction with the government in the
relevant issue area: automobile and traffic management. A more important
question is about the effects of the revelation of the falsehood of the govern-
ment’s denial on the respondents’ satisfaction with the government. But since
prior research offers very little guidance on this issue, we are agnostic about
its immediate or lasting effects.

Research Design and Recruitment

The ever-present information battle between the state and society in China
presents an excellent opportunity for this research by providing an environ-
ment rich with rumors and denials, with some of the latter eventually turning
out to be false. We use data from a two-wave online survey conducted in fall
2017 about Chinese internet users’ trust in different information sources and
public policies. The first wave was a survey experiment, and the respondents
were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group was exposed
to a rumor regarding the government’s automobile registration policy (rumor
group), the second group was exposed to the government’s denial of the
rumor (denial group), and the third group was exposed to an event in which
the rumor initially denied by the government was verified as true (verifica-
tion group). Because our focus is how denial and verification of a rumor
Wang and Huang 7

affect people’s attitudes toward the government, not the influence of rumor
itself, we did not have a pure control group that was not exposed to any of the
above messages, including the rumor; instead, the rumor or denial group
served as the baseline in the analysis below.
In the second wave follow-up survey, which occurred about 3 weeks after
the first wave, respondents from the verification group of the first wave, who
witnessed the government’s denial of the rumor and the eventual revelation
of the falsehood of the denial, were re-enrolled and exposed to another rumor
about automobile policy and the government’s denial. For the purpose of the
second wave, this group will be called the experience group. For comparison,
a new group of respondents, who did not participate in the first-wave experi-
ment, was also recruited in the second wave and exposed to the same rumor
and denial as the experience group. This new group will be called the no
experience group. As should be clear, this second-wave survey was designed
to explore whether witnessing a government denial proven false would have
lasting effects on respondents who had that experience.
While more details of the survey and experiment will be provided in the
following sections, here we provide the outline. In each wave, all respondents
were first asked about their (pre-treatment) political interest,3 trust in the gov-
ernment,4 life satisfaction,5 and sociodemographic information. Then they
were given a brief message describing the worsening traffic congestion in a
Chinese city. Afterwards respondents in the different groups were exposed to
the rumor, denial, and/or verification messages, as described above, with all
messages referring to the aforementioned city experiencing worsening traffic
congestion (see the following sections for the content of each specific mes-
sage). Finally, all respondents were asked to rate their belief in the various
messages they had just been exposed to and their satisfaction with the govern-
ment related to the issue at hand, namely the government’s automobile and
traffic management, all on a scale from 1 to 100.6 In the surveys we referred to
the unconfirmed rumor as “unverified information” rather than “rumor” to
ensure the neutrality and naturalness of the information provision.
The rumors and denials in our study were about local automobile regis-
tration policies. We chose these relatively low-stakes rumors rather than
“big rumors” about issues like an epidemic, high-level corruption, or elite
politics for a number of reasons. First, traffic congestion is a common issue
in Chinese urban areas, so automobile management is a policy area that most
people care about. Second, the government’s about-faces concerning this
issue reflect a common issue of policy unpredictability and instability in
authoritarian countries, due to the public’s lack of sufficient say in the policy
formulation process.7 Therefore these seemingly low-stake rumors have sig-
nificant political implications. Last, but not the least, such a choice could
8 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

reduce the political sensitivity of the survey and increase respondents’ will-
ingness to provide genuine answers.
The rumors and denials in the study were based on two real events occur-
ring, respectively, in southern and northern China, and real government and
media messages. For ethical reasons, it is important to use information that is
actually available on the Chinese media and internet rather than making up
rumors or denials.8 To increase the external validity and not to tie the treat-
ment to a specific real event, however, we replaced the names of the real
places with generic English letters (e.g., City “H”). A pilot survey conducted
prior to our formal surveys shows that there is a large variation in Chinese
online respondents’ exposure to socio-political news, with some respondents
following news very closely. Therefore, to minimize the possibility that some
respondents may have heard the rumors and/or denials prior to the study, and
their opinions may have been polluted by their attitudes toward the specific
locations and events, it was reasonable to make the locations of the events
vague. Using generic letters to make the specific location vague is also a
common practice in Chinese research studies as well as in online news.
Therefore, participants in our study understood that what they saw in the
survey was referring to actual events in non-specified locations.
Respondents in the two-wave study were recruited from Baidu Zhongce
(https://test.baidu.com/), a Chinese crowd-sourcing website for recruiting
and compensating agents to perform tasks. Baidu Zhongce has a larger user
pool than many other crowd-sourcing websites in China: over 17 million
registered users of age 18 or above, covering 300 cities in China. In addition,
its closed user system and bonus structure is particularly useful for re-enroll-
ing the same participants in follow-up studies, which is important for our
purpose. To prevent repetitive participation, each Baidu ID (registered user)
and each unique IP address could participate only once in the experiments
(with the exception of participants in the verification group of the first wave,
who were re-enrolled to participate in the follow-up survey, as explained
above).
Because we study internet rumors and denials, recruiting subjects online
and having them take the surveys on their own computers in their own places
increased the mundane realism of the experiment and the generalizability of
the results. The study’s participants had a broad geographic representation:
they came from all province-level administrative regions of mainland China
except Tibet. They also represented diverse walks of life, including students,
government employees, corporate employees, workers and professionals,
agricultural labor, and other occupations. In addition, they were also from
many different age groups and educational backgrounds. Although the
respondents were somewhat younger and better educated than the general
Wang and Huang 9

internet population in China (a feature common to internet surveys), they

nevertheless achieved a broad demographic representation. Moreover, the
younger and better educated generation is also more politically active and,
therefore, worth particular attention. See Supplemental Appendix 1 for the
demographic breakdowns of the study participants and the general Chinese
internet population.
Because a potential challenge to online surveys is to ensure that the
respondents pay proper attention to the questions, we recorded the time each
participant spent in completing the survey and dropped from the analysis a
small number of unusual speeders who finished the procedure faster than a
predetermined generous time threshold.9 This yielded 2905 effective partici-
pants in the first wave experiment and 1948 effective participants in the sec-
ond wave survey.

The Immediate Effects of False Government

Denials
Our wave 1 experiment was designed to investigate respondents’ immediate
reaction to a government denial and the revelation that the denial was false.
The respondents were randomly assigned to one of three approximately
equal-sized groups discussed above: the rumor group, the denial group, and
the verification group. After a set of general questions on the respondents’
pre-treatment attitudes and sociodemographic information, and a reminder of
the traffic congestion issue in City H, all respondents were presented with the
following rumor about automobile registration policy:
Some online sources said automobile registration in City H of Zhejiang
Province would soon be allocated by a license-plate lottery system starting
March 25, 2017. As a result, all automobile 4S dealers in City H became
crowded with customers and stayed open all night. At least 200 cars lined up
outside the Office of Automobile Administration, waiting to register for
licenses. Some new car owners simply slept in their cars overnight.
The denial group and the verification group were then presented with the
government’s denial of the rumor. In addition, the verification group, after
seeing the denial, was shown a news event in which the initial rumor was
proven to be true. The rumor group did not see the denial or verification.
The government’s denial read as follow: The traffic management authori-
ties of City H issued a rebuttal via official media, stating that online specula-
tion about the city’s car registration system moving to a license-plate lottery
system on March 25th was pure fake news. The government reminded citizens
not to believe the online rumors and exercise judgment in making car pur-
chase decisions.
10 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

The news item that verified the veracity of the initial rumor was as fol-
lows: On March 25th, 2017, the municipal government of City H abruptly
announced that the city would limit the number of automobile plates by
adopting a license-plate lottery system. This is despite the fact that, from
2016 until the announcement of the new policy, relevant government agencies
of City H had altogether issued 11 denials regarding online speculation about
the lottery system.
After these information treatments, all respondents were asked about their
belief in the initial rumor, and those in the denial group and verification group
were asked about their belief in the official denial. Finally, all respondents
were asked about their satisfaction with the government’s work in automo-
bile and traffic management. Figure 1 details the differences in the groups’
information exposure (dashed boxes indicate outcome questions).
Figure 2 displays the means comparisons of belief in information and
satisfaction with government across the three experimental conditions in
wave 1.10 As expected, the left panel of Figure 2 indicates that, relative to the
rumor condition, the denial significantly reduced the respondents’ belief in
the rumor, with the effect size being 11.8 points on a 100-point scale. The
verification, on the other hand, increased belief in the rumor relative to the
denial condition by 8.6 points, although the level of belief was still about
3.1 points lower than the rumor group. That people believe more in the rumor
when it was just a rumor than when it has been verified is likely because the
verification group was also exposed to the denial message. This two-sided
information flow thus cancelled out some effect of the one-sided information
flow of the rumor group (Zaller, 1992, 1996).
The middle panel of Figure 2 compares the verification group and the
denial group’s belief in the denial. As expected, verification of the rumor
increased the respondents’ belief in the denial. The effect size was 5.8 points
on the 100-point scale. The right panel of Figure 2 shows that the denial
group and the rumor group had similar levels of satisfaction with govern-
ment, while the verification group had a slightly lower level of satisfaction
(2.7 points lower than the rumor group). Given that the government’s denial
in the experiment was very simple and did not come with a great deal of
explanation or evidence, this result is consistent with the findings in the exist-
ing literature (Huang, 2017).
One potential concern with the results is that the rumor referred to an
event in Zhejiang Province, so respondents from that province might have
seen something similar before, even though the specific city was made vague
in the experiment. To mitigate this concern, in Supplemental Appendix 3 we
provided the means comparison of the three groups both with and without
respondents from Zhejiang. The results are broadly similar, except the small
Figure 1.  The procedure of the wave 1 experiment.

Figure 2.  Group means of belief in information and satisfaction with government
(wave 1).

differences between the rumor and verification group are no longer statisti-
cally significant at conventional levels when Zhejiang respondents are
excluded, meaning the verification largely restored non-Zhejiang respon-
dents’ belief in the rumor and satisfaction with the government to the rumor
condition. For further robustness, we also added the speeders back to the
sample. Doing so did not qualitatively change the main results either: In both

11
12 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

cases the denial reduced belief in the rumor and verification increased belief
in the rumor (see Supplemental Appendix 4).
Most, but not all, demographic and attitudinal covariates across the three
groups were well-balanced. Therefore we ran ordinary least square regres-
sions on the respondents’ belief in the rumor, belief in the denial, and satisfac-
tion with the government, controlling for a set of covariates. In all regressions,
we include the usual demographic variables, political affiliation (member-
ship in the Chinese Communist Party), and pre-treatment attitudinal ques-
tions including political interest, political trust, and life satisfaction.
Demographic variables include gender, age group, education, income level,
and rural/urban residence.
Table 1 shows the regressions results. The baseline in regressions (1)
and (2) is the rumor group, where we compare the denial group and the
verification group with the rumor group. The baseline in regressions (3),
(4), and (5) is the denial group, where we compare the verification group
directly with the denial group. The results are consistent with the means
comparisons: Denying a rumor reduced the respondents’ belief in that
rumor; verification of the rumor increased belief in the rumor and reduced
belief in the denial. Table 1 also shows that, after controlling for the covari-
ates, the small difference in satisfaction with government between the
rumor group and the verification group is no longer statistically significant.
In other words, neither denial nor verification had immediate effects on
satisfaction with the government.
Among demographic variables, education increased belief in the govern-
ment’s denial, income increased belief in the rumor, and females were more
satisfied with the government. Members of the Chinese Communist Party did
not have a significantly different level of belief in the rumor (or the denial)
than non-members; nor did they have significantly higher satisfaction with
the government. This suggests that in contemporary China party membership
is to a large extent motivated by instrumental considerations rather than polit-
ical or ideological reasons. Interestingly, with regards to attitudinal covari-
ates, people with higher political trust and political interest were more likely
to believe both the rumor and the denial (when they saw the denial); in other
words, they were more responsive to whatever information they were exposed
to. They were also more satisfied with the government, similar to those with
higher life satisfaction.
In sum, in the first-wave experiment official denial reduced the respon-
dents’ belief in the rumor, while verification of the rumor decreased belief in
the denial and increased belief in the original rumor. Aside from the verifica-
tion of rumor, which is new in the literature, the key results from our first
wave experiment are consistent with previous research on rumor and denial
Table 1.  Belief in Information and Satisfaction with Government (Wave 1).
Belief in Government Belief in Belief in Government
rumor satisfaction rumor denial satisfaction
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

  (Baseline: Rumor group) (Baseline: Denial group)

Denial −11.796*** −0.231  

(1.417) (1.196)
Verification −2.835* −1.424 8.923*** −5.367*** −1.146
(1.427) (1.242) (1.483) (1.457) (1.264)
Education 0.956 1.389 1.647 2.887* 1.964
(1.198) (1.045) (1.474) (1.411) (1.284)
CCP −1.155 1.347 −3.943 −5.484 0.861
member (2.580) (2.103) (3.304) (3.105) (2.694)
Female −1.998 3.168** −1.819 0.744 4.796***
(1.224) (1.048) (1.560) (1.521) (1.342)
Age −1.931* −0.206 −1.198 −0.327 −0.499
(0.936) (0.733) (1.208) (1.134) (0.949)
Income 1.846** −0.729 1.651* −0.099 −0.927
(0.575) (0.481) (0.728) (0.686) (0.595)
Rural 1.094 2.761* 2.355 −2.270 2.112
resident (1.322) (1.095) (1.709) (1.638) (1.389)
Political trust 1.286* 5.578*** 1.380* 2.731*** 5.666***
(0.544) (0.496) (0.689) (0.691) (0.616)
Life 1.428 4.247*** 1.277 1.720 5.107***
satisfaction (0.729) (0.623) (0.898) (0.885) (0.754)
Political 1.526* 2.469*** 1.912* 3.205*** 3.124***
interest (0.710) (0.612) (0.888) (0.892) (0.772)
Constant 41.667*** 18.723*** 25.458*** 34.471*** 12.147*
(4.838) (4.229) (5.875) (5.700) (5.125)
N 2905 2905 1927 1927 1927

In regressions (1) and (2), the baseline is the rumor group. In regressions (3), (4), and (5), the baseline is
the denial group. Robust standard errors in parentheses. P-values reflect two-sided hypothesis tests.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

in China. This indicates the validity of our experiment and increases our con-
fidence in the results on rumor verification in both waves.

The Lasting Effects of False Government Denials

The wave 2 survey, which occurred 3 weeks after the first wave, was designed
to examine whether people who have had the experience of witnessing proof
that the government’s denial was false would have a higher level of belief in
rumors and lower level of belief in the government’s denials of unconfirmed

13
14 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

Figure 3.  The procedure of the wave 2 survey.

information. For this purpose, we recruited two groups of subjects: a group of

new subjects who had not participated in the survey before and participants
in the verification group in the wave 1 survey experiment, who were re-
enrolled in the second-wave survey.11 In the following we will call the re-
enrolled participants the experience group, and the new participants the no
experience group. In essence we had a quasi-experiment in the wave 2 sur-
vey, with the no experience group being our control group and the experience
group being our treatment group, except that their treatment was received
prior to the second-wave survey.
Note that with this design we are comparing respondents who had some
experience with the government’s false denial with respondents who had a
clean slate, that is, individuals who were not exposed to either the rumor,
denial, or confirmation messages. Alternative comparisons and designs will
be discussed in the concluding section. Our recruitment platform, Baidu
Zongce, provides double to triple rewards to participants who agree to take
part in a follow-up survey or a return visit. With such an incentive scheme,
we were able to re-enroll all respondents in the verification group of wave 1
to participate in wave 2 as the experience group. To make the experience
group in wave 2 identical to the verification group in wave 1, we dropped the
speeders in wave 1’s verification group from the analysis of wave 2.
Both the experience group and no-experience group went through the same
procedure as the denial group in the first-wave experiment, namely, they were
exposed to a rumor about the new automobile registration policy and then the
government’s denial, and afterwards their belief in the rumor and denial and
their satisfaction with the government were measured (see Figure 3). The dif-
ference between the two groups was simply that one of them had previously
experienced the revelation of the government’s false denial of an online rumor,
while the other group did not have such an experience.
The rumor and denial in the wave 2 survey were about the same issue as in
the wave 1 experiment but differed from those in wave 1 in terms of location,
time, and specific content. Again, for external validity, we replaced the exact
Wang and Huang 15

Figure 4.  Group means of belief in information and satisfaction with government
(wave 2).

location with a generic English letter. The rumor read as follows: Online spec-
ulation says that car registration in City X of Hebei Province will be allocated
by a license-plate lottery system, starting on September 7th, 2017. In order to
buy cars before the new policy is implemented, residents have lined up at local
automobile dealers and the Automobile Administration Office. According to
people familiar with the matter, a few people from Beijing had registered over
thirty car license plates. One of them alone even bought 12 cars.
The government’s denial read as follow: The authorities of City X held a
press conference to rebut online rumors about the automobile registration
policy change. The government reminded citizens not to believe the false
online rumor about a lottery-based registration system. Any policy changes
will be announced in a timely way by the traffic management agency.
Figure 4 presents the difference in means between the experience and no
experience groups in the second wave survey. The left panel of Figure 4
shows that the experience and no experience group had very similar levels of
belief in the rumor. This by itself is not a significant result, given that both
groups of respondents were seeing a new rumor. But it does add validity to
our other results about the two groups’ belief in the denial of the rumor and
satisfaction with the government. First, it mitigates any concern one may
have about the potential experimenter demand effect, which previous research
has already demonstrated to be limited in survey experiments (Mummolo &
16 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

Peterson, 2019). If the respondents from the experience group had suspected
the researcher’s expectations, having seen a similar rumor (which was even-
tually verified) should increase their belief in this rumor when answering the
survey questions. But they did not, suggesting they were sincerely complet-
ing the survey. Second, this close similarity in the two groups’ belief in the
rumor indicates that any difference between them about belief in the denial or
satisfaction with the government is not due to their differential belief in the
rumor.12 Rather, the differences should be attributed to the experience group’s
earlier encounter with the government’s false denial.
Indeed, the middle panel of Figure 4 shows that although the two groups
in the second wave had little difference in rumor belief, the experience group
had a significantly lower level of belief in the denial than the no experience
group (effect size = 7.3 points on a 100-point scale). As discussed earlier,
while authoritarian countries can be awash with rumors and fake news, it is
less frequent for the government’s false denials to be caught due to the lack
of independent news media and fact-checking organizations. It is therefore a
vivid and memorable experience to see the government’s denial bluntly
shown to be false. Unsurprisingly, such an experience would make people
less willing to believe a new denial from the government, especially if it is
somewhat similar to the one that had been shown to be false.
In addition and interestingly, the right panel of Figure 4 shows that the expe-
rience group also had a lower satisfaction with the government than the no-
experience group (effect size = 6.2 points). Note that, in the first-wave
experiment, the verification of the initial rumor and debunking of the govern-
ment’s denial did not change the respondents’ satisfaction with the government
(after controlling for the covariates), but 3 weeks later, the experience group
report a lower level of government satisfaction than the no experience group.
This suggests that while the government’s dishonesty in denying the initial
rumor has little immediate effect on the respondents’ satisfaction with the gov-
ernment, mulling it over for a few weeks and seeing something similar again
has an effect on their political attitudes beyond citizens’ belief in future govern-
ment denials. In other words, false government denials have lasting effects not
only on government credibility itself, but also on larger political satisfaction.
Note that the rumor in the second wave referred to an event in Hebei
Province, so respondents from that province might have seen something sim-
ilar, even though the specific city was not revealed in the rumor message.
Similar to the analysis of the first-wave experiment, in Supplemental
Appendix 5 we provide the means comparison of the three groups both with
and without respondents from Hebei. The results are qualitatively the same.
To adjust for the imbalances in background factors of the two groups in
the second-wave survey,13 Table 2 shows regression results controlling for a
Wang and Huang 17

Table 2.  Belief in Information and Government Satisfaction (Wave 2).

Government
Belief in rumor Belief in denial satisfaction
Experience 0.242 −5.931*** −5.771***
(1.540) (1.408) (1.296)
Education −1.968 1.414 −1.011
(1.547) (1.420) (1.365)
CCP member 2.474 2.368 −1.580
(2.612) (2.216) (2.285)
Female 0.833 −1.340 −0.445
(1.520) (1.366) (1.269)
Age 1.412 0.960 1.345
(1.158) (1.000) (0.958)
Income 0.528 0.203 −0.232
(0.694) (0.614) (0.569)
Rural resident −1.266 0.278 0.198
(1.652) (1.500) (1.358)
Political trust −0.777 1.694** 2.922***
(0.691) (0.647) (0.595)
Life satisfaction 0.344 0.586 2.683***
(0.900) (0.829) (0.762)
Political interest −0.198 2.009* 0.078
(0.884) (0.793) (0.719)
Constant 53.158*** 50.413*** 48.886***
(6.102) (5.575) (5.433)
N 1948 1948 1948

The baseline is the no-experience group. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. P-values
reflect two-sided hypothesis tests.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

set of covariates. The results are consistent with the means comparison
results: The two groups had similar levels of belief in the rumor, but the prior
experience of seeing the government falsely denying a piece of real news as
fake had significant effects in decreasing people’s belief in a future denial and
on their satisfaction with the government.
For robustness checks, we use two different matching methods—coars-
ened exact matching (CEM) and propensity score matching (PSM)—to
assure balances on observables and reduce sensitivity to functional form
assumptions. With CEM matching, respondents in the experience group are
paired with those in the no experience group with the same value of residen-
tial status (urban or rural), party affiliation (CCP membership), age group,
18 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

education, income level, political interest, political trust, and life satisfaction.
With PSM matching, each respondent in the experience group is matched
with a respondent in the no experience group based on a variant of nearest-
neighbor calipers of the above covariates. We set neighbor = 1, given that the
proportion between the experience group and the no experience group is 1:
1.25. This guarantees that each respondent in the experience group has one
comparison “closest” to him or her in the no experience group with regards
to the values of the covariates. We use three different calipers for each con-
nected respondent: 0.001, 0.01, and 0.05. The results of the different match-
ing methods are reported in Table 3. As shown, they are consistent with the
before-matching results in Figure 4 and Table 2. In addition, we conducted
regression analyses using on-support respondents from the two different
matching methods, controlling for the same covariates as we described above,
and the results are robust (see Appendices 7 and 8).
The matching strategy still relies on a selection on observables assump-
tion, and there could be concerns that the effects of the experience of a false
government denial on belief in denial and satisfaction with government are
due to unobserved confounders. As a further robustness check, therefore, we
conduct a sensitivity analysis to show that the effects are not sensitive to
potential unobservables. The basic idea of the sensitivity analysis is to show
how much stronger selection on unobservables, relative to selection on
observables, must be to explain away the full observed treatment effects.
To implement the sensitivity analysis, we follow the method developed in
Altonji et al. (2005) and measure the ratio of selection on unobservables to
selection on observables (see also Nunn & Wantchekon, 2011). To see how
the method works, consider the coefficient estimates for our variable of inter-
est from two different regressions: one from a regression with a restricted set
of controls, βR, and the other from a regression with a full set of controls, βF.
The ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables is repre-
sented by βF /(βR −βF). The larger the numerator (βF), the greater is the effect
that needs to be explained away by selection on unobservables. On the other
hand, the smaller the denominator (βR −βF), that is, the smaller the difference
between βR and βF, the less our estimate is affected by selection on observ-
ables, and the stronger selection on unobservables needs to be to explain
away the effect. Therefore, the larger the ratio, the stronger selection on
unobservables must be to explain away the full estimated effect of our vari-
able of interest: previous experience with a false government denial.
We consider two sets of restricted control variables: one with no controls
at all and the other with only demographic controls (age, gender, education,
income, rural residence, and CCP membership). The full set of controls are
the ones that appear in Table 2. Table 4 reports the ratios for both belief in
Table 3.  Group Means Differences in Information Belief and Government
Satisfaction: Before and After Matching (Wave 2).
Before CEM
matching matching PSM matching

Caliper = Caliper = Caliper =

0.001 0.01 0.05
  (1) (2) (3) (4) (3)

Belief in 0.074 1.255 −0.746 −0.851 −0.599

rumor (1.491) (2.504) (1.807) (1.687) (1.686)
[307] [650] [754] [755]
Belief in −7.266*** −6.855** −6.909*** −6.751*** −6.011***
denial (1.346) (2.278) (1.658) (1.538) (1.533)
[307] [650] [754] [755]
Satisfaction −6.230*** −8.045*** −6.835*** −6.155*** −6.119***
with (1.254) (2.083) (1.499) (1.412) (1.412)
government [307] [650] [754] [755]

This table presents the results before and after employing matching methods. Each coefficient presents
the average treatment effect on the treated of belief in rumor, belief in denial, and satisfaction with the
government. The matching methods are based on the following set of covariates: gender, age group,
education, income level, communist party membership, residential status (rural or urban), political trust,
political interest, and life satisfaction. In column (2), coarsened exact matching is employed, while in
columns (3)–(5), propensity score matching with different calipers are used. Measures are on a scale from 1
to 100. Entries in the parentheses are standard errors. In the brackets are numbers of matched units in the
treatment group. The t-tests of the mean difference estimates are under the assumption of equal variances,
and the associated p-values reflect two-sided tests.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 4.  Sensitivity Analysis: Using Selection on Observables to Assess Potential

Bias from Unobservables.

Controls in βF /(βR −βF) for

the restricted Controls in the βF /(βR −βF) for satisfaction with
model full model belief in denial government
None Full set of controls 5.931/(7.266–5.931) 5.771/(6.230–5.771)
from Table 2 = 4.443 = 12.573
Demographics Full set of controls 5.931/(6.435–5.931) 5.771/(6.269–5.771)
from Table 2 = 11.768 = 11.588

denial and satisfaction with government. Of the four ratios reported, none is
less than one. For belief in denial, the ratios are 4.4 and 11.8, and for satisfac-
tion with government, the ratios are 12.6 and 11.6. This means that to attri-
bute the effect of previous experience with false government denial on belief
in denial to selection effects, selection on unobservables would need to be at
least four times greater than selection on observables. And to explain away

19
20 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

the effect on satisfaction with government, selection on unobservables would

need to be at least 11 times greater than selection on observables. Both sce-
narios seem highly unlikely.

Discussion and Conclusion

We conducted a survey experiment and a follow-up survey to examine the
consequences of government denials of initially unconfirmed rumors that
later turn out to be true. The study’s main findings are that while an official
denial can initially reduce citizens’ belief in the unconfirmed information,
when the denial is revealed to be false citizens will have lower levels of belief
not just in the current denial but also the government’s future denials of simi-
lar rumors. Moreover, the negative lasting effects will carry over to satisfac-
tion with the authorities in the related policy area. Thus, while government
denials of a piece of real news may temporarily reduce citizen belief in the
news, in the long run they will reduce government credibility and citizens’
political trust and satisfaction.
Note that the rumors in our study were about local automobile registration
policies and thus relatively low stakes, and yet the result of false government
denials was negative. One can imagine that if the government denial was
about more significant news such as a public health crisis or intra-elite politi-
cal conflicts, the effects of the revelation of false government denials might
be even stronger. For example, after Li Wenliang’s warning turned out to be
true, his death almost provoked an online revolt and the comment section of
his last social media post became China’s virtual Wailing Wall (Buckley &
Mozur, 2020; Li, 2020). Future research can look into the consequences of
false government denials in these higher-stakes areas.
Readers may be concerned that a recency effect drove the effect in our
second-wave survey, that is, the experience group was simply reminded that
the government had recently told lies and, therefore, reported a lower level of
satisfaction. While 3 weeks are not a terribly short a time in our era of infor-
mation overload, it is possible that a longer lapse of time would see the effect
of a single false government denial diminished. However, in real life people
come across false government denials from time to time, and thus their mem-
ories would be regularly reinforced. The potential recency effect of any par-
ticular denial is therefore inconsequential.
One potential limitation of our research design is that the second wave
survey did not use randomization. We have used matching strategies and sen-
sitivity analysis to show that our results are robust with regards to functional
form assumptions and potential unobserved confounders. An alternative and
Wang and Huang 21

potentially cleaner design would be to have a pure control group in the first
wave that was not exposed to any of the rumor, denial, or verification mes-
sages, and then re-enroll both this pure control group and the verification
group in the second wave. This would assure randomization in our compari-
son of the experience group with the no-experience group. We could also re-
enroll the rumor and denials groups in the first-wave experiment for the
second wave, although then we would be comparing the full experience
group with subjects who have had a rumor and/or denial experience, a com-
parison that is different from our full experience versus clean slate compari-
son. These alternative designs can be explored in the future.
In addition, the denial in the second-wave survey of this study was simi-
lar to that in the first wave. Future research can examine if the loss of gov-
ernment credibility extends to government denials in general rather than
just similar denials. Conversely, future research can also examine the con-
sequences of truthful government denials of critical rumor and specula-
tions. For example, Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire and
real-estate tycoon, has released on social media explosive claims against
the Chinese government, including corruption at its highest levels.
Naturally, the Chinese government has denied the claims. Among other
things, it accuses Mr. Guo of forging “top secretive” government docu-
ments, the possession of which had been used by Guo as evidence that he
had high-level access within the Chinese government (Xinhua News
Agency, 2018). But while some of Guo’s revelations may be accurate, inde-
pendent and Western sources have reported that many others are outland-
ishly aggrandized or provably false (Forsythe & Stevenson, 2017; Hilgers,
2018). As a result, Guo’s following among overseas Chinese dissidents has
significantly waned, with some even accusing him of being a spy for the
Chinese Communist Party and splitting the dissident community (Hilgers,
2018). What are the political consequences when fierce critics’ accusations
against the authorities turn out to lack evidence and the latter’s denial was
corroborated by independent and credible sources? This will be an interest-
ing research question about opinion dynamics in authoritarian countries
that would complement our current study.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Jia Chen, Yue Hou, Tianguang Meng, Robert Ostergard,
Xiaoyu Pu, Lai Wei, Yang Zhong, several anonymous reviewers, and participants
of the 2019 Workshop on Chinese Politics and Society in Shanghai for helpful
comments.
22 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

ORCID iD
Haifeng Huang https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-0303

Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes
  1. Rumor, fake news, and misinformation are not identical concepts. Rumors are
claims “without secure standards of evidence being present” (Allport & Postman,
1947, p. ix), but they might sometimes turn out to be correct. Fake news and mis-
information, by their very labels, refer to false claims and information. But due
to the close connections among these concepts, the literature has treated them in
similar ways.
  2. We recognize that denials by governments are not always acts of deliberate dis-
honesty but may sometimes reflect different policy intentions or policy instabil-
ity. But from the society’s point of view, revealed falsehood of official denials
nevertheless represents the lack of credibility of official statements.
  3. Political interest was measured by asking respondents’ interest in reading social-
political news. The choices were “not interested at all,” “not very interested,”
“neutral,” “somewhat interested,” and “interested.”
  4. Political trust was measured by asking respondents the extent to which they agree
with the following statement: “The local government’s policies are designed to
serve the interest of the general public.” The choices were “disagree,” “some-
what disagree,” “neither agree nor disagree,” “somewhat agree,” and “agree.”
Because transportation and automobile policy are local issues, we asked about
trust in the local government rather than the central government.
  5. Question wording: “All things considered, how do you feel about your life, work,
and study these days?” The choices were “dissatisfied,” “somewhat dissatisfied,”
“neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” “somewhat satisfied,” and “satisfied.”
  6. Question wording on satisfaction with the government: “On a scale from 1 to
100, with 1 being ‘completely dissatisfied’ and 100 being ‘completely satisfied,’
indicate the extent to which you are satisfied with the government’s urban traffic
control and management.” Because automobile and traffic management is local
government responsibility, the question should be understood as asking about
Wang and Huang 23

satisfaction with local governments. The questions on belief in the rumor and
denial used similar wording, with unbelievable/believable replacing dissatisfied/
satisfied.
  7. For example, in an effort to revive the economy and boost employment after
the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese premier Li Keqiang made a high-profile pitch
for the street-stall economy at the 2020 National People’s Congress. Less than
2 weeks later, the Chinese government backpedaled on the push with a series of
state media editorials cautioning or opposing it, perhaps because the idea con-
flicts with General Secretary Xi Jinping’s vision of China as an advanced and
high-tech superpower (Chen, 2020).
  8. The study received Institutional Review Board approval from the first author’s
institution at the time of the study.
  9. The pre-determined time threshold, set based on results from a pilot survey, was
150 seconds. The average time to finish the survey in wave 1’s rumor group,
which was shorter than all other groups since this group did not see the denial or
verification message, was 283 seconds. Therefore the threshold of 150 seconds
was quite generous.
10. See Supplemental Appendix 2 for the balance of covariates in the first-wave
experiment.
11. Respondents in the experience group did not know that they would be recruited
again for a follow-up survey at the time of the first-wave survey experiment.
12. Note that belief in a rumor and belief in its denial are not mutually exclusive.
For example, (some degree of) disbelief in a rumor does not necessarily mean (a
corresponding degree of) belief in the denial.
13. See Supplemental Appendix 6 for the balance of covariates in the second-wave
survey.

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Author Biographies
Chengli Wang is an assistant professor of the School of Public Economics and
Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He is interested in
politics of information, especially information flow and control, rumors and misinfor-
mation, and information inequality in developing countries. He has published in
International Affairs.
Haifeng Huang is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of
California, Merced. His research interests include international information exposure,
propaganda, misinformation, and media freedom.