Information Credibility under Authoritarian Rule: Evidence from China

Do citizens under authoritarian rule trust government information? To answer this question, I compared citizen statements and movement trajectories from smartphone social media communication in real-time with precise timestamps and locations in response to the government's press releases during the Kunming railway station attack in southwestern China in 2014. I find that while outward engagement with government information may increase as the government releases more information, citizen trust in such information, in fact, diminishes, even when the information itself is straightforward and factual. In other words, an authoritarian government's efforts to disseminate information comes with a cost - its credibility.