This paper investigates the impact of increased media competition on the quantity and quality of news provided and, ultimately, on political participation. I build a new county-level panel dataset of local newspaper presence, newspapers' number of journalists, costs and revenues and political turnout in France, from 1944 to 2014. I estimate the effect of newspaper entry by comparing counties that experience entry to similar counties in the same years that do not. Both sets of counties exhibit similar trends prior to entry, but those with entry experience substantial declines in the average number of journalists. An increased number of newspapers is also associated with fewer articles and less hard news provision. Newspaper entry, and the associated decline in information provision, is ultimately found to decrease voter turnout at local elections. Exploiting the long time span covered by my data, I discuss a number of mechanisms that may drive these empirical findings. First, I examine the relationship between increased competition and media capture in the aftermath of WW2, when newspapers were biased and the advertising market was underdeveloped. I then show that in the recent period the effects are stronger in counties with more homogeneous populations, as predicted by a vertical product differentiation framework, whereas there is little impact in counties with more heterogeneous populations.
This paper investigates the impact of increased media competition on the quantity and quality of news provided and, ultimately, on political participation. I build a new county-level panel dataset of local newspaper presence, newspapers' number of journalists, costs and revenues and political turnout in France, from 1944 to 2014. I estimate the effect of newspaper entry by comparing counties that experience entry to similar counties in the same years that do not. Both sets of counties exhibit similar trends prior to entry, but those with entry experience substantial declines in the average number of journalists. An increased number of newspapers is also associated with fewer articles and less hard news provision. Newspaper entry, and the associated decline in information provision, is ultimately found to decrease voter turnout at local elections. Exploiting the long time span covered by my data, I discuss a number of mechanisms that may drive these empirical findings. First, I examine the relationship between increased competition and media capture in the aftermath of WW2, when newspapers were biased and the advertising market was underdeveloped. I then show that in the recent period the effects are stronger in counties with more homogeneous populations, as predicted by a vertical product differentiation framework, whereas there is little impact in counties with more heterogeneous populations.
This dissertation examines the ability of the media to monitor politicians and the ability of voters to acquire politically relevant information. The dissertation is primarily made up of three separate papers. The first paper (Chapter 2) asks why citizens routinely fail to vote out of step representatives out of office and what institutions can help voters hold politicians accountable. To the extent that politicians exploit voters' lack of information to win at the ballot box despite shirking in Congress, the press could foster democratic accountability by sounding the alarm on out of step representatives and alerting otherwise inattentive voters that it is time for change. In the first paper in my dissertation I collect an original dataset of local newspaper coverage of candidates in the 2010 House election in order to find out whether newspapers play this role for voters and act as a watchdog of incumbent representatives. After working with research assistants to provide human classification of a random subset of these articles, I use a text as data machine learning approach to measure the content of the much larger volume of articles that we cannot read. After validating an ensemble ``SuperLearner'' by demonstrating out-of-sample classification accuracy that for many features approaches human inter-coder agreement, I show that challengers receive less coverage than incumbents in competitive districts, horse race coverage displaces policy coverage, and newspapers do not sound the alarm on out of step incumbents. Newspapers do provide a whiff of scandal when representatives are referred to the House Ethics Committee for potential ethics violations, but they do not criticize representatives accused of some form of corruption at significantly higher rates. Even in congressional districts that closely correspond to newspaper markets, journalists act as neither watchdog nor lapdog, but instead provide overwhelmingly neutral coverage, failing to criticize incumbents who vote against a majority of their constituents on landmark legislation.The second paper (Chapter 3) provides experimental evidence that candidate appearance influences vote choice. According to numerous studies, candidates' looks predict voters' choices---a finding that raises concerns about voter competence and about the quality of elected officials. This potentially worrisome finding, however, is observational and therefore vulnerable to alternative explanations. To better test the appearance effect, we conducted two experiments. Just before primary and general elections for various offices, we randomly assigned voters to receive ballots with and without candidate photos. Simply showing voters these pictures increased the vote for appearance-advantaged candidates. Experimental evidence therefore supports the view that candidates' looks could influence some voters. In general elections, we find that high-knowledge voters appear immune to this influence, while low-knowledge voters use appearance as a low-information heuristic. In primaries, however, candidate appearance influences even high-knowledge and strongly partisan voters.The third paper (Chapter 4) examines which major events in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign saw only a brief spike in coverage and which became a more permanent feature of campaign coverage. In particular, I analyze coverage of six major events in the presidential campaign to test the hypothesis that news outlets of all persuasions will cover major events as news, but only partisan outlets will continue to discuss negative stories about their opponents long after the event that made the topic news. Broadly, I find that all outlets do indeed pick up major stories temporarily, but that the more tradition news news organization in my study does not stick with a higher level of coverage of any topic after a seven day window following the related event. Partisan outlets, in contrast, either continue to cover negative stories about the opposing candidate at a higher rate or were already on the story before a related event caused everyone else to temporarily pick up the story. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses the implications of my findings for democratic accountability and the health of American democracy. I conclude that for the most part democracy is conducted in a dim light.
O artigo tem por objetivo investigar como o jornalismo local apresenta a visão dos turistas estrangeiros sobre Fortaleza durante a Copa do Mundo de 2014. Partindo dos referenciais sobre imagem, discute-se a construção da imagem do Brasil e, mais especificamente, do Ceará. A análise crítica do discurso (ACD), com base nas proposições de Norman Fairclough (2005), é o caminho escolhido para analisar duas notícias publicadas em junho de 2014, nos dois principais jornais da cidade, O Povo e Diário do Nordeste. O foco em qualidades de Fortaleza ajuda a construir uma imagem positiva da cidade para o cidadão local.
This article examines differences in news coverage of female candidates using a media sociology framework that examines the interplay between organizational, routine, and individual levels of influence. The analyses find that national and local newspapers are more likely to write about the political qualifications of female candidates relative to male candidates, and female journalists at local newspapers are most likely to write about women's political qualifications. Female candidates receive more feminine stereotypic coverage across newspapers, especially in all-women elections. These results uncover important differences across media organizations that affect how female candidates develop their campaign strategies and voter decision-making.
This paper investigates the impact of increased media competition on the quantity and quality of news provided and, ultimately, on political participation. Drawing upon existing literature on vertical product differentiation, I explore the conditions under which an increase in the number of newspapers can decrease both the quantity and quality of news provided. I build a new county-level panel dataset of local newspaper presence, newspapers' newsrooms, costs and revenues and political turnout in France, from 1944 to 2014. I estimate the effect of newspaper entry by comparing counties that experience entry to similar counties in the same years that do not. Both sets of counties exhibit similar trends prior to newspaper entry, but those with entry experience substantial declines in the average number of journalists (business-stealing effect). An increased number of newspapers is also associated with fewer articles and less hard news provision. These effects are stronger in counties with more homogeneous populations, as predicted by my simple theoretical framework, whereas there is little impact in counties with more heterogeneous populations. Newspaper entry, and the associated decline in information provision, is ultimately found to decrease voter turnout at local elections.
This paper investigates the impact of increased media competition on the quantity and quality of news provided and, ultimately, on political participation. Drawing upon existing literature on vertical product differentiation, I explore the conditions under which an increase in the number of newspapers can decrease both the quantity and quality of news provided. I build a new county-level panel dataset of local newspaper presence, newspapers' newsrooms, costs and revenues and political turnout in France, from 1944 to 2014. I estimate the effect of newspaper entry by comparing counties that experience entry to similar counties in the same years that do not. Both sets of counties exhibit similar trends prior to newspaper entry, but those with entry experience substantial declines in the average number of journalists (business-stealing effect). An increased number of newspapers is also associated with fewer articles and less hard news provision. These effects are stronger in counties with more homogeneous populations, as predicted by my simple theoretical framework, whereas there is little impact in counties with more heterogeneous populations. Newspaper entry, and the associated decline in information provision, is ultimately found to decrease voter turnout at local elections.
If there is one realm of public life in which the provincial press has long justified the mantle 'fourth estate', it is in fulfilling its time-honoured role as principal scrutinizer (and critic) of local government. For generations, regional newspapers in the UK, mainland Europe and the United States have been our primary sources of information on the deliberations and decisions of local authorities - and our channels for dissent over wayward procedures, policies and politicking. Yet, as we enter the second decade of a new century - a brave new digital world, in which it should be easier than ever for journalists to keep us abreast of the activities of councillors and officials - local papers appear increasingly neutered, at least in England and Wales. Surveys point to a dramatic decline in the amount of space and time they are devoting to council coverage, and the steady demise of dedicated local government correspondents. This chapter argues that these developments can be partly blamed on recent reforms to the way in which councils in England and Wales conduct their business. Tony Blair's Local Government Act (HM Stationery Office 2000a) ushered in cabinet-style council executives based on the model used by the UK's national administration. The act simultaneously exempted them from meeting in public, unless discussing major decisions that they intended to make collectively.
การวิจัยนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาข้อจำกัดด้านเงินทุนของหนังสือพิมพ์ท้องถิ่นจังหวัดอุบลราชธานีที่ส่งผลต่อการทำหน้าที่ตรวจสอบหน่วยงานภาครัฐในระดับพื้นที่จังหวัดอุบลราชธานี ซึ่งศึกษาหนังสือพิมพ์ท้องถิ่นจังหวัดอุบลราชธานี 2 ฉบับ คือ (1) หนังสือพิมพ์โอเคอีสาน (2) หนังสือพิมพ์ปทุมมาลัย โดยใช้วิธีการสำรวจและวิเคราะห์เอกสารหนังสือพิมพ์ฉบับเดือนสิงหาคม พ.ศ. 2556 ถึงเดือนกรกฎาคม พ.ศ.2559 และการวิเคราะห์บทสัมภาษณ์เชิงลึกผู้ที่เกี่ยวข้อง 11 คน ผลการวิจัยพบว่าหนังสือพิมพ์ท้องถิ่นจังหวัดอุบลราชธานีมีบทบาทในการตรวจสอบรัฐค่อนข้างน้อยมากไปจนถึงไม่มีเลย ด้วยข้อจำกัดด้านเงินทุนในการดำเนินงานเป็นปัญหาสำคัญที่ทำให้การบริหารงานสื่อไม่มีระบบที่ชัดเจน ขณะที่การทำอาชีพสื่อมวลชนไม่สามารถทำเพื่อเป็นรายได้เลี้ยงตนเองได้ จึงส่งผลถึงการได้มาซึ่งบุคลากรที่เป็นมืออาชีพในการเป็นสื่อมวลชน บทบาทการตรวจสอบรัฐจึงทำได้ยากเนื่องจากเจ้าของสื่อหรือบุคลากรสื่อต้องใช้เวลาไปกับการหาแหล่งทุนเพื่อมาอุดหนุนสื่อหนังสือพิมพ์ของตนเอง ทั้งนี้จากการศึกษาหนังสือพิมพ์ที่พบว่ามีการตรวจสอบหน่วยงานรัฐบ้างแต่เป็นส่วนที่น้อยมาก เนื่องจากเกรงกลัวข้อกฎหมายและอิทธิพลทางการเมือง นอกเหนือจากนั้นคือการที่บุคลากรในกองบรรณาธิการมีอาชีพหลักอย่างอื่นที่ไม่ใช่การเป็นสื่อหนังสือพิมพ์ท้องถิ่นอย่างเดียว โดยที่การทำสื่อหนังสือพิมพ์ท้องถิ่นเป็นเพียงอาชีพเสริมเท่านั้น ซึ่งบุคลากรเหล่านั้นต้องให้เวลากับอาชีพหลักของตนเอง จึงส่งผลให้ไม่ได้ทำหน้าที่สื่อมวลชนได้อย่างเต็มที่ โดยเฉพาะบทบาทในการตรวจสอบรัฐ อย่างไรก็ตามจากการศึกษาแหล่งทุนที่ได้มาจากหน่วยงานรัฐเป็นส่วนน้อย แต่ก็ไม่ได้ทำให้หนังสือพิมพ์ท้องถิ่นทำหน้าที่ตรวจสอบรัฐมากขึ้น This study aimed to investigate financial limitations of Ubon Ratchathani local newspapers influencing the inspection of government agencies in the province. Two local newspapers including OK E-san and Patum Malai, publishing on August 2013 – July 2016, and In-depth Interview among a total of 11 stakeholders were applied for data collection. The results of the study demonstrated that the local newspapers did not play a significant role, or had no role, for checking the government agencies because of their financial constraints, considered as a critical problem resulting in an unclear media management system. Incomes of officers who are working in the mass media industry were not enough for their livings contributing to insufficient officers/professionals in the mass media industry. Additionally, it was quite hard to check the government agencies as mass media entrepreneurs including officers spent their most working times to find a source of investment funds to sustain their newspapers. The findings also indicated that only few government agencies were inspected as the newspapers companies were afraid of laws and political authorities. Officers in the editorial department also had other significant occupations, the newspaper work considered as a supplement work, so that they could not give an importance on the mass media work especially the duty of checking on government performances. Lastly, few investment funds of the two newspapers companies were granted by the government; however, it was not influential for them in performing the inspection of government agencies.