Fourth Estate or Mouthpiece? A Formal Model of Media, Protest, and Government Repression
Date
2012-04-26
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
New 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.
Description
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Article
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Keywords
media, human rights, democracy, protest, repression
Citation
Political Communication (2012) 29:2, 113-136