Looking back at our history, it is not uncommon to see that genocides and mass killings were supported by elites in control of governments. In Yugoslavia alone, the government of Milosevic was responsible for more than 100,000 deaths, while the Chinese government has been accused of being responsible for more than 1.2 million deaths in Tibet since 1950. The hard truth is that although national and international actors have sought mechanisms prevent these massacres, governments continue to kill or fail to protect civilians from mass violence.

Recent research found very compelling evidence about an important mechanism in place during mass killings: mass media. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, a radio propaganda campaign lead by Hutu government officials spread messages of hate and called for the extermination of the Tutsi minority. By calculating the reach of the radio signal and assessing the number of civilians and militia prosecuted for violent crimes, Yanagizawa-Drott found solid evidence of the campaign’s effect on the number of people taking part in the violence during the genocide. According to the results, a staggering 10 percent of the violence, or the acts of 51,000 perpetrators, can be attributed to the radio broadcasts. More importantly, Yanagizawa-Drott also found that much of the violence led by militia did not take place in the villages that had reception, but in neighboring ones. In other words, mass media directly and indirectly influenced the level of participation in violence because key agents were able to carry the messages of hate where the radio signals could not reach.