The Media (v Simple No Models) Flashcards
2 views of media
Provides voters important info
Or misleading info
Media with important info is positive role:
Why is there a role for media
As acquiring and transmitting info has a high fixed cost and low variable cost, so inefficient for voters to do this directly, so they help fulfil this role
(Almost like a natural monopoly)
Why do media publish misleading info (2)
Since media owners have own agenda
Political ideology
Or
Profit maximising so can bias
1920s media: radio
Did ratio affect spending (Stromberg)
Yes, radio access did increase spending from government (reduced in asymmetric info which drove more favourable policy- so positive role)
Stromberg then also looked at mass media disasters:
How
Looked at newsworthy events, which compete amongst each other for airtime
They compared 2 similar events, where a storm struck and school shooting occured. 2 events competed for airtime, thus media owners have to decide which to publish accounting for their politics and profit-maximisation. There was a crowding out effect, US gave no aid
Whereas a year earlier, a storm struck but no shooting thus no competition for airtime, US gave aid.
Key example of news pressure
911 crowded out everything - took all airtime - high news pressure
Crowds out other events so may receive less funding or aid
So crowding out exists,
2 Olympics facts
e.g disasters during olympics 5% less likely to make news, so 6% less likely to receive funding
A disaster during olympics must be 3 times as deadly as one outside of the olympics in order to be equally as likely to receive relief
So media DOES impact policies
Politicians known this, so how can they use this to their advantage? (2)
Can time actions strategically if they want them covered/forgotten e.g release unfavourable bad news during low attention periods e.g during big events (see Durante and Zhuravskaya later)
Can influence media directly (media capture) e.g state-owned media, or enforce regulatory pressures (Besley and Prat)
So media is often bias - but we need to measure how bias articles on the same topic are relative to each other.
E.g one article is 5% bias towards this way… other is left wing bias 10%
How to measure
Gentzkow and Shapiro - measure slant of bias
2 main drivers of media bias
Political (media owners have ideologies)
Economic (profit maximising)
Gentzkow and Shapiro measure bias/slant
Consider each 2/3 word phrase e.g death tax (republican) vs estate tax (democrat)
If uses more republican phrases, republican slant!
Then they explore what drives this slant. By using a model of ‘supply of slant’
Where can slant come from
B) what do they find is the main driver
Political
Economic (profit)
B) they find profit explains more variation in slant!
So media’s are often bias: Does this media bias affect voting : See Fox News impact:
B) what was this result driven by (2)
Yes - Fox News was republican slanted - 3-28% (200k additional votes) convinced to vote republican
B)
Media bias created: general ideological shift i.e change in median voter
Increased turnout overall! (Media coverage could’ve mobilised this too!)
Repcall: politicians are aware media impacts policies
So they can time actions strategically if want events forgotten/captured, and directly influence media (media capture)
Durante & Zharavskaya on strategic timing
Israel 36% increase in attacks to West Bank (Palestine) while US news focused on big events like Superbowl
Beasley and Prat - 3 forms of media capture (how politicians influence media) and examples
Ownership - state-own media outlets e,g Russian oligarch owns Channel One Russia
Regulatory pressure: license revokement e.g Chinese Weibo not allowed for illegal news gathering
Financial aid or bribes
