American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Media Bias in China
American Economic Review
vol. 108,
no. 9, September 2018
(pp. 2442–76)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
This paper examines whether and how market competition affected the political bias of government-owned newspapers in China from 1981 to 2011. We measure media bias based on coverage of government mouthpiece content (propaganda) relative to commercial content. We first find that a reform that forced newspaper exits (reduced competition) affected media bias by increasing product specialization, with some papers focusing on propaganda and others on commercial content. Second, lower-level governments produce less-biased content and launch commercial newspapers earlier, eroding higher-level governments' political goals. Third, bottom-up competition intensifies the politico-economic tradeoff, leading to product proliferation and less audience exposure to propaganda.Citation
Qin, Bei, David Strömberg, and Yanhui Wu. 2018. "Media Bias in China." American Economic Review, 108 (9): 2442–76. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170947Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- L31 Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
- L82 Entertainment; Media
- O14 Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
- O17 Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
- P26 Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: Political Economy; Property Rights
- P31 Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions