Essays on media bias and government control of media
The first portion of my dissertation studies the effects of foreign media entry on the quality of information provided to citizens through government controlled media. The government controlled media is tasked to maximize citizen's support or buy-in, and that they can influence it by misreporting the state. An imperfectly informed foreign media is then introduced as an additional independent information source. This removes the government's role as the sole provider of information and alters bias in the government media's report. I find that foreign media typically lowers local media bias. However, when quality of government is low, foreign media entry can exacerbate local media bias. The resulting deterioration in local media quality can outweigh the additional information from a foreign media of moderate quality, leaving citizens worse off. In addition, I analyze the government decision to suppress foreign media, and find suppression most heavily used in countries with moderate quality of governance.The second portion of my dissertation studies the effects of an imperfectly informed foreign media entry on the government's and citizen's welfare. The model considers the existence of two government's type: one that maximizes citizen's welfare by requiring the controlled media to truthfully report the state, while the other tasks local media to persuade citizen's decision by misreporting the state. The presence of an independent foreign media has an ambiguous effect on local media bias because it reduces government's benefit from lying -- as more information limits government's ability to influence, and its cost -- as it limits future ability to influence and reduces the government's incentive to build reputation. A benevolent government that is perceived to be trustworthy may favor stricter media control because incorrect information from foreign media can misleads citizen into making poorer informed decisions. On the other hand citizen prefers the presence of an imperfectly informed foreign media's because the independent news source complements the potentially biased report from local media, and limits the government's influence that tasked local media to misinform the state. Lastly government may react differently to foreign media entry. However in cases where citizen is confident of the government's ability to promote public interest, both governments may be against foreign media entry. This gives rise to signaling equilibrium where government restrains from media control to signal themselves as a benevolent government.
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- In Collections
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Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Copyright Status
- In Copyright
- Material Type
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Theses
- Authors
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Cheah, Hon Foong
- Thesis Advisors
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Ahlin, Christian R.
- Committee Members
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Choi, Jay Pil
Araujo, Luis
Wildman, Steve
- Date Published
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2012
- Subjects
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Mass media policy
Econometric models
Journalism
Objectivity
Mass media
Government and the press
Press and politics
- Program of Study
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Economics
- Degree Level
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Doctoral
- Language
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English
- Pages
- viii, 103 pages
- ISBN
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9781267477460
1267477466
- Permalink
- https://doi.org/doi:10.25335/q7p3-9627