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Browsing College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences by Subject "media"
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Item Fourth Estate or Mouthpiece? A Formal Model of Media, Protest, and Government Repression(Routledge, 2012-04-26) Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer; James, PatrickNew media dramatically increase citizens’ access to information and decrease governments’ ability to control the flow of communication. Although human rights nongovernmental organizations have advocated that access to independent news media will improve government respect for human rights, recent empirical studies have shown this is not always the case. We posit that media independence and the presence or absence of democratic characteristics, in particular political competition, have substantial effects on government repression because these factors determine the degree to which the government is vulnerable to public pressures. The model developed here includes three equations that encompass the impact of interaction between and among the news media, citizens, and government. The first equation specifies the influences on the news media’s decision whether or not to perform a “watchdog” role regarding government repression. The second equation represents public reaction to the news media’s coverage of government repression (i.e., protest). Here access to news media via traditional and new media is an important factor. The third equation represents government repression. Solutions to the system of equations are derived for four scenarios (a) Democracy and media independence are both present, (b) democracy is present but media independence is absent, (c) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is present, and (d) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is absent. We then consider interesting properties of the anticipated behavior from the government, media, and general public through case illustrations for the Netherlands and Myanmar/Burma.Item News about her: The effects of media freedom and internet access on women's rights(Routledge, 2016-09-08) Whitten-Woodring, JeniferHuman rights organizations have long heralded media freedom as critical to holding government accountable and thereby improving a wide range of human rights. Similarly the Internet and social media are assumed to empower citizens by enabling them to document repression and thereby discourage future abuse. So what does this mean for women’s rights? I propose that, when it comes to women’s rights, the combination of media freedom and Internet access will make a difference and that the effect of media freedom will depend on Internet access. I test my hypotheses across countries and over time and find that the interaction of Internet access and media freedom has positive effects on women’s rights regardless of regime type.Item The Role of Media in the Repression-Protest Nexus: A Game-theoretic Model(Sage, 2015) Kim, HeeMin; Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer; James, PatrickIdealized independent media function as ‘‘watchdogs.’’ Indeed, human rights nongovernmental organizations have argued that media freedom will improve human rights. This makes sense intuitively, yet recent formal and empirical studies show that the effect of independent media varies across regime types. We explore the relationship among media, government, and citizen protest movements and employ a game-theoretic model to investigate how the equilibria vary depending on regime type and media independence. In terms of equilibrium, we find that media watchdogging is most active in autocracies (and not in democracies), especially when the government’s perceived capability to repress public protest is declining. Uncertainty about the government’s ability to repress plays a central role in accounting for the manifestation of media watchdogging in conjunction with public protest. Illustrations from Tunisia and North Korea are provided to highlight equilibria derived from the formal model that vary as a product of perceptions about the government’s ability to repress.