The Unraveling of Support for Authoritarianism: The Dynamic Relationship of Media,Elites,and Public Opinion in Brazil,1972–82

Abstract

This work examines the dynamic relationship among elites, media, and the public during authoritarian rule. Using Brazil’s military regime (1964–85), it investigates whether changing press censorship influenced public support for military rule during the period of political liberalization. This paper uses the exposure-resistance model of opinion formation, in which a person’s probability of supporting a position depends first on her probability of exposure to and reception of an elite cue advocating that position, and secondarily on the probability that she resists that position once exposed. Her likelihood of exposure to and reception of elite cues increases with her attention to news media and the extent of her political awareness; her odds of accepting the positions advocated by elites depends on her political ideology and her critical capacity to evaluate the content and source of the cue. Using three public opinion surveys carried out between 1972 and 1982, and an analysis of newspaper content during the dictatorship, this research demonstrates that censored media convinced Brazilians to support military rule initially, only later during political liberalization, to expose them to increasingly critical coverage of the regime, convincing many to abandon their support for the regime.