Information, Media and Elections: Incentives for Media Capture

Serena Drufuca (serena.drufuca@gmail.com)

No 1402, Working Papers (2013-) from University of Bergamo, Department of Management, Economics and Quantitative Methods

Abstract: Media play an essential role in democracy by making available valuable information for electoral decisions. In a framework of political economy of mass media, I inquiry the possibility of capture by rent-seeking o cers in a heterogeneous electoral environment. This allow me to discuss when relevant information is traded, when government captures media and what e ect this has on political outcomes. I nd media capture to be a pervasive phenomenon which implies minimum costs on politicians' side. However, incentives to corruption decrease if the possibility of being detected is introduced, leading to a more intermediate result with respect to the one obtained by Besley and Prat (2006). I show that information is a fundamental element for electoral choices and that any attempt to increase quality of news and to reduce information's costs can have positive e ects on the selection of politicians.

Keywords: mass media; information acquisition; media capture; elections; incumbency advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 D81 H10 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cul, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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