Synonyms

Mass media

Definition

Media refer to means of mass communication such as the Internet, television, radio, and newspapers.

Media as a Mechanism for Controlling Government

Citizens in democratic regimes face a principal-agent problem with respect to their elected governors. While citizens empower political officials to wield government’s authority in citizens’ interests, left unchecked, political officials are tempted to use that authority for personal benefit. Democratic elections provide a means by which citizens may hold elected officials accountable for their uses of government authority. However, citizens’ ability to use the voting both for this purpose depends crucially on the extent of their knowledge about political actors’ behavior and their ability to coordinate responses to such behavior.

Media can improve democracy’s ability to help citizens address the principal-agent problem they face with respect to elected officials (Besley and Burgess 2001, 2002; Coyne and Leeson 2004, 2009a, 2009b, Leeson and Coyne 2007). By reporting on political actors’ behavior, media inform citizens about the activities of political actors that are relevant for citizens’ evaluation of such actors as stewards of citizens’ interests. Moreover, by providing such information to large numbers of citizens, media can help coordinate citizens’ responses to what they learn about political actors’ behavior, rewarding faithful stewards of their interests through, for example, reelection and punishing bad stewards through popular deposition and/or refusal to reelect them.

Media can also help citizens address political agency problems through the foregoing channel by influencing who seeks political office. Where would-be political officials know that the private benefits of holding political office are low because of media-provided information and media-facilitated citizen coordination, individuals who desire political power to further their own interests rather than citizens’ are less likely to seek elected office.

Media Freedom and Government Control of Media

The extent to which media can assist citizens in addressing the principal-agent problem they face with respect to political officials depends on media’s freedom. Media freedom (or independence) refers to the extent to which government can directly or indirectly control the content of media-provided information reaching citizens. Where media freedom is higher, government’s ability to influence the content of media-provided information is weaker and vice versa.

Government control of media can take many forms (Leeson and Coyne 2005). The most direct form is state ownership of media outlets. For example, all North Korean media outlets are controlled by the Korean Workers’ Party or other appendages of the North Korean government. Elsewhere, media outlets are not owned by government, but are nevertheless owned by powerful people in government, creating a similar situation. Italy under the prime ministership of Silvio Berlusconi, who was also an Italian media mogul, is one well-known example of this phenomenon.

Government may also control media indirectly through ownership of media infrastructure. For instance, Romania’s only newsprint mill was state owned for years following the end of Romanian communism. Similarly, the Associated Press of Pakistan is owned by the Pakistani government. In other countries, government exercises indirect control over media outlets whose financial positions depend on state-supplied income, such as revenue from government advertising.

Another important source of indirect government control of media is regulation of the media industry. Many governments require licenses for newspapers, television stations, and even journalists to operate and may use this power to restrict entry into the media industry to individuals who are friendly to the government and/or use the threat of license revocation to silence media critics.

Where government exerts significant influence over media and thus media are unfree, media’s usefulness as a mechanism for assisting citizens to solve the agency problems they face with respect to their political officials is seriously impaired. Rather than monitoring political actors’ behavior and reporting accurately on their uses of authority, media are likely to avoid furnishing citizens with such information or, worse still, furnish citizens with misleading information that benefit those in power. Uninformed or misinformed citizens find it difficult to use media-provided information to hold political actors accountable or to coordinate appropriate responses to such actors’ behavior. Media’s ability to effectively control government thus hinges critically on its freedom from government.

Media’s Influence on Politics

A strong link exists between media and citizen knowledge. Citizens who are exposed to more media coverage of their local politics and who live in regions where media are freer are more politically knowledgeable than citizens who enjoy less media coverage of their local politics and who live in regions where media are less free. For example, in Eastern Europe, citizens who live in countries where media are freer are more likely to correctly answer basic questions about political representation in the EU, and in the United States, citizens who are exposed to more media coverage of their local politics are more likely to know their congressman’s name (Leeson 2008; Snyder and Stromberg 2010).

A strong link also exists between media and political-economic outcomes. Across countries, freer media are associated with higher voter turnout and other forms of political participation (Leeson 2008). Freer media are also associated with higher income, more democracy, more education, and more market-oriented economic policies (Djankov et al. 2003). In the United States, congressmen whose districts receive better media coverage are more likely to vote in a manner consistent with their party’s line, stand witness before congressional committees, and procure more spending for their districts (Snyder and Stromberg 2010).

Media’s Role in Developing/Transition Economies

In developing and transition economies, media freedom is especially critical for political-economic development. Here, the problem of dysfunctional and corrupt government is pronounced, rendering media as a mechanism for controlling such malfeasance – a mechanism that, as indicated above, requires media independence – of particular importance.

Peru provides a striking example of how even a small amount of media independence can have a large effect on political-economic outcomes in the developing world (McMillan and Zoido 2004). Despite the Fujimori government’s bribe-secured control of all major media outlets in the country in the late 1990s, a small independent station that had not been bribed, Channel N, managed to acquire a recording of a high-ranking government official bribing an opposition politician to switch parties. Channel N repeatedly broadcast the video, and following suit, other channels began doing so too, eventually generating a popular backlash against the Fujimori government and the downfall of the corrupt Fujimori administration. In this case, the existence of only a single free media outlet proved critical to exposing political malfeasance and catalyzing the removal of a self-serving government.

In Russia, in contrast, a dearth of media freedom has prevented media from controlling government. Under the Soviet regime, government completely controlled Russian media, which served as little more than tools for government propaganda. During glasnost and perestroika, laws guaranteeing media independence were passed, and Russia’s media appeared to become significantly freer. Ties between Russian media and political elites were never completely severed, however, and Russian media independence suffered major blows during the economic downturn of the early 1990s.

During this period, Russian media circulation and revenue plummeted. In consequence, many media outlets became dependent on state subsidies. Today, the Russian government commonly interferes with freedom of the press (on an important exception, see Enikolopov et al. 2011). Owners of media outlets that are critical of the government are threatened with jail time or forced to sell, and journalists who are critical of the state have been intimidated and even killed (Zassoursky 2004). Government’s influence on media in Russia has contributed to Russian political actors’ ability to wield public office for private gain.