Chun-Fang Chiang
Department of Economics
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Phone: (401) 316-7205
E-mail: chunfang [at] brown.edu
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Chun-Fang ChiangDepartment of Economics Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Phone: (401) 316-7205 E-mail: chunfang [at] brown.edu |
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Research interests: Political Economy, Public Economics, Labor Economics
Political Differentiation in Newspaper Markets (job market paper) (.pdf)
Economists disagree about whether competition between media outlets makes their ideologies converge or diverge. This paper analyzes how media competition affects the political ideologies of media outlets as well as news consumption of the general public. Using the National Annenberg Election Surveys in 2000 and 2004, the empirical results show that moderate voters are more likely to read a local newspaper than those at the extremes. However, newspaper competition has a larger positive effect on newspaper reading for people at the extremes. The results also show that newspaper competition reduces incentives among those with extreme ideologies to access political information online. These results suggest that readers prefer a newspaper with an ideology that is closer to their own, and that newspaper competition will make newspapers specialize in different ideologies.
Electoral Competition and Media Bias (.pdf)
During an election period, the media plays an important role by providing background information on candidates to the general public. However, the media can be biased in favor of a specific candidate. If media bias is generated to cater to the major preferences in the media market, we should see more news coverage of the Republican candidate in markets where the majority of viewers is Republican. However, if the media bias comes from the motivation to impact the outcome of the election, we will see more media bias in media markets where the election is more competitive. In this paper, a simple model is constructed to explain how electoral competition affects media bias under the motivation to impact the election outcome. In the empirical analysis, media bias is measured by the relative length of presidential candidates' sound bites in local TV news stories prior to the 2000 presidential election. The data shows that media bias is greater in media markets where the election is more competitive, which implies that media bias comes primarily from the desire to affect the election outcome.
Last Update: 2007-11-8