Here is a “paper”:http://people.su.se/~daya0852/Rwanda_jmp.pdf by “David Yanagizawa”:http://people.su.se/~daya0852/ that reaches the conclusion that radio did make a difference in inciting violence. This seems to depart from the Scott Strauss’ article mentioned by “John”:https://themonkeycage.org/2011/01/rhetoric_and_violence_in_the_r.html. Yet, it is hard to tell. Yanagizawa is careful about identifying the causal effect but Strauss’ primary argument is that the radio messages: “take on significance only when situated in a broader context of violence.” This seems plausible to me and cannot be disproved by estimating a local average treatment effect (which is what Yanagizawa does). Below is the abstract:
bq. This paper investigates the impact of propaganda on participation in violent conflict. I examine the effects of the infamous “hate radio” station Radio RTLM that called for the extermination of the Tutsi ethnic minority population before and during the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. I develop a model of participation in ethnic violence where radio broadcasts a noisy public signal about the value of violence. I then test the model’s predictions using a nation-wide village-level dataset on radio coverage and prosecutions for genocide violence. To identify causal effects, I exploit arguably exogenous variation in radio coverage generated by hills in the line-of-sight between radio transmitters and villages. Consistent with the model under strategic complements in violence, I find that Radio RTLM increased participation in violence, that the effects were decreasing in ethnic polarization, highly non-linear in radio coverage, and decreasing in literacy rates. Finally, the estimated effects are substantial. Complete village radio coverage increased violence by 65 to 77 percent, and a simple counter-factual calculation suggests that approximately 9 percent of the genocide, corresponding to at least 45 000 Tutsi deaths, can be explained by the radio station.