Manufacturing extremism: political consequences of profit-seeking media

Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, Kalyan Chatterjee and Jaideep Roy

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Birmingham

Abstract: We analyze the consequences of a monopolistic, non-partisan, profit maximizing media on policy divergence. The media undertakes costly coverage that may reveal the quality of an office-seeking political challenger only if quality-conscious voters pay for an access fee. Voters are ideologically homogenous and the incumbent politician is a populist with known quality. We show that while media absence implies a populist challenger, media presence yields platform extremism: it creates demand for informatin about quality and provides incentives to the media to invest in coverage that are exploited by high-quality challengers to signal strength.

Keywords: Unobserved quality; Political challenger; Demand for electoral news; Media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bir:birmec:15-14

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