The Media and the State: Historical Evidence from U.S. Newspapers

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Extensive legal and regulatory traditions embed hypotheses about how media market structure affects the performance of democracy. Testing those hypotheses requires rich data from a setting with variation in market structure, quantitative measures of newspaper content, and plausible strategies for identifying effects of media markets on political markets. This project uses novel data from the United States to fulfill these requirements and bring new light to fundamental questions about the role of media in society. The first part assesses the effect of media markets on political participation and competitiveness. The analysis supplements limited existing evidence on the effect of media exposure on political participation. It goes beyond existing evidence in looking at how those effects vary with market structure: i.e., how the number and diversity of actors in the media space impacts the political process, both in terms of participation and candidate selection. The second part studies how newspapers' incentives shape the ideological diversity of the media market. It uses new data and methods to conduct the first ever empirical study of the determination of media slant in the presence of competitors. It uses the results to answer questions about how consumer tastes, competition, and other factors affect the degree of diversity and the representation of minority views. The third part studies the causes and effects of ownership consolidation in the newspaper industry. It uses data on the economic performance of news markets to assess alternative explanations for consolidation and analyze its effects on market performance. It also attempts to explain the major twentieth century trend towards cross-market ownership consolidation, and tests whether it is related to trends in within market concentration.Broader Impacts: This project produces by far the most comprehensive data archive to date on the history of U.S. daily newspapers. This will be of broad use to scholars of media history in all social science and humanities disciplines. The project provides important empirical evidence on key policy questions relating to the effects of the news media on society and the appropriate regulation of media market structure. The project also creates opportunities to train undergraduate and graduate students in empirical research using a novel dataset that may form a useful starting point for independent research.