Partisan Control, Media Bias, and Viewer Responses: Evidence from Berlusconi’s Italy

Ruben Durante () and Brian Knight
Additional contact information
Ruben Durante: ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: This paper examines whether and how viewers respond to changes in partisan bias in media news. We use data from Italy, where the main private television network is owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the centerright coalition, and the public television corporation is largely controlled by the ruling coalition. We first document that after the 2001 national elections, when the control of the government moved from the center-left to the center-right, news content on public television shifted to the right. Using individual survey data, we find robust evidence that viewers responded to these changes by modifying their choice of favorite news programs. On the one hand, right-leaning viewers increased their propensity to watch public channels which, even after the change, remained to the left of private channels. On the other hand, left-wing viewers reacted by switching from the main public channel to another public channel that was controlled by the left during both periods. We show that this behavioral response, which tended to shift ideological exposure to the left, significantly, though only partially, offset the movement of public news content to the right.

Date: 2012-06
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03600693
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published in Journal of the European Economic Association, 2012, 10 (3), pp.451 - 481. ⟨10.1111/j.1542-4774.2011.01060.x⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03600693/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: PARTISAN CONTROL, MEDIA BIAS, AND VIEWER RESPONSES: EVIDENCE FROM BERLUSCONI'S ITALY (2012)
Working Paper: Partisan Control, Media Bias, and Viewer Responses: Evidence from Berlusconi’s Italy (2012)
Working Paper: Partisan Control, Media Bias, and Viewer Responses: Evidence from Berlusconi's Italy (2009)
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:hal:spmain:hal-03600693

DOI: 10.1111/j.1542-4774.2011.01060.x

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().