Media Freedom and the Institutional Underpinnings of Political Knowledge*

Martijn Schoonvelde

Political Science Research and Methods, 2014, vol. 2, issue 2, 163-178

Abstract: Recent empirical workin the study of political sophistication finds that citizens’ knowledge of politics is not only a function of their individual characteristics but also depends on the supply of information from their environment (the ‘information environment’). Yet this literature does not address the question of how the information environment may be shaped by institutional factors. This article aims to fill this void. It first argues that the relationship between a government and the media affects the information that is available to individual citizens. Using cross-national data, it then finds that less government interference with the media (1) positively affects political learning and (2) moderates the individual-level effect of education on learning.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:2:y:2014:i:02:p:163-178_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Political Science Research and Methods from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().