Informational Autocrats, Diverse Societies

This paper presents a theoretical model of an autocrat who controls the media in an attempt to persuade society to support a policy. We base our analysis on a Bayesian persuasion framework in which citizens have heterogeneous preferences. We characterize the autocrat’s information manipulation strategy when society is monolithic and when it is divided. In both cases, when the preferences in society become more diverse, the autocrat engages in less information manipulation. Our findings thus suggest that the diversity of attitudes and opinions can act as a bulwark against information manipulation by hostile actors.