Media control as source of political power: The role of oligarchs in electoral authoritarian regimes

在混合政治制度中，操纵媒体报道是争夺政治权力的主要战场之一。在从委内瑞拉到俄罗斯、再到土耳其等国，威权倾向的增长始于对独立媒体及其所有者的压力，在许多情况下，这些媒体及其所有者都是有权势的商人。文献中的普遍假设是，威权政权的商业大亨利用他们的媒体资产与现任精英谈判达成更好的协议，以换取媒体对政府议程的支持。然而，当(1)执政的政治精英的利益与拥有媒体的商业大亨的利益相抵触，或者(2)人民通过大规模抗议活动质疑政治政权的合法性时，这一假设显然受到了挑战。此外，人们经常认为，媒体所有权赋予了对媒体报道的直接控制权，这意味着所有权导致媒体有效地产生所需的信息。在拟议的研究项目中，我们将通过将媒体和记者视为所有者的代理人而不是喉舌来检验这一假设。我们还将研究商业精英使用的战略叙事，以更好地了解他们的媒体控制不仅对狭隘的政治权力斗争，而且对政治事件和政治体制的更广泛框架的影响。到目前为止，声称商业大亨拥有媒体的政治相关性的作者中，没有一位做出确实要求严格的努力，系统地评估媒体所有权对媒体报道的实际影响，最重要的是，当商业大亨的利益与政治精英的利益发生冲突时，事件框架的变化，迫使商业大亨调整他们的战略。拟议的研究项目将系统和彻底地分析商业大亨在争论不休的时刻利用大众媒体的情况，以及这种利用对政治制度的影响。为此目的，该项目将采用多种方法，最突出地侧重于内容分析和比较案例研究设计中的访谈。由于拥有媒体所有权的商业大亨的选举威权政权数量相对较多，后苏联地区(以哈萨克斯坦、俄罗斯和乌克兰为案例国家)被选为最相似的案例-设计。

In hybrid political regimes the manipulation of media reporting is one of the major battlegrounds for political power. In countries ranging from Venezuela over Russia to Turkey increasing authoritarian tendencies have started with pressure on independent media and their owners, who in many cases are powerful business people.The general assumption in the literature is that business tycoons in authoritarian regimes use their media assets to negotiate better deals with the incumbent elite in exchange for support of the government agenda by their media. However, this assumption is obviously challenged in situations when (1) the interests of the ruling political elites go against the interests of media-owning business tycoons or when (2) the legitimacy of the political regime is questioned by the people through mass protests. Moreover, it is regularly assumed that media ownership gives direct control over media reporting, implying that ownership leads to the desired message being efficiently produced by the media. Within the proposed research project we will test this assumption by examining the media and journalists as agents rather than mouthpieces of the owners. We will also study the strategic narrative used by business elites in order to get a better understanding of the impact of their media control not just on narrow political power struggles, but also on the broader framing of political events and on the political regime.None of the authors claiming the political relevance of media ownership by business tycoons has so far made the indeed demanding effort to systematically assess the actual impact of ownership on media reporting, and most importantly, changes in the framing of events, when the interests of business tycoons collide with those of the political elite, forcing the business tycoons to adjust their strategies. The proposed research project will systematically and thoroughly analyse the instrumentalization of mass media by business tycoons during contentious moments and the effects of that instrumentalization on the political regime. To this aim the project will employ a multi-method approach focusing most prominently on content analysis and interviews in a comparative case studies design. Due to the relatively large number of electoral authoritarian regimes with media-owning business tycoons, the post-Soviet region (with Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine as case countries) has been selected in a most similar cases-design.