Local Media and the Shaping of Social Norms: Evidence from the Ebola outbreak

Ada Gonzalez-Torres

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Media's influence on norms and behavior is widely recognized. Less is known about the role played by media being local. I examine this in a high-stakes context, the Ebola outbreak in Guinea. I exploit quasi-random variation in access to radio and the timing of a public-health campaign aired on community radio. I find that 12-17% of Ebola cases could have been prevented if places with access to a neighboring community radio station had instead had their own. Impacts are driven by radio being local rather than by ethno-linguistic belonging. Local media facilitates coordination in behaviors observed and sanctioned locally.

Date: 2022-10, Revised 2026-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.15946 Latest version (application/pdf)

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:arx:papers:2210.15946

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().