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Telecracy: Testing for Channels of Persuasion

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Author Info

  • Guglielmo Barone

    () (Bank of Italy)

  • Francesco D'Acunto

    () (Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley)

  • Gaia Narciso

    () (Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin)

Abstract

Can biased information persuade in the long run? Political information on Italian TV has been biased towards Berlusconi's party since 1994. We exploit a shock to viewers' exposure to Berlusconi bias: idiosyncratic deadlines to switch to digital TV from 2008 to 2012. Digital TV increased the number of freeview channels tenfold. As a consequence, viewership of Berlusconi-controlled channels by digital users dropped by 19% from 2008 to 2010 elections. Although the control of most pre-digital outlets by Berlusconi was widely known, the switch caused a drop in his coalition vote share by 5.5 to 7.5 percentage points. The e ect was stronger in towns with older and less educated voters. At least 30% of digital users had not ltered out the bias from 1994 to 2010. Moving to digital TV a ected voting via turnout: previous Berlusconi supporters went to vote less than others, hence his vote share dropped. We discuss several Bayesian interpretations, and argue that they cannot fully explain these results. Coarse thinking, selective attention, and persuasion bias are broadly consistent with the evidence.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics in its series Trinity Economics Papers with number tep0412.

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Length: 50 pages
Date of creation: Dec 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0412

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Keywords: media bias; elections; voting behavior;

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  1. Ruben Enikolopov & Maria Petrova & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2011. "Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3253-85, December.
  2. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2006. "Media Bias and Reputation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 280-316, April.
  3. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2006. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers," NBER Working Papers 12707, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Larcinese, Valentino & Puglisi, Riccardo & Snyder Jr., James M., 2011. "Partisan bias in economic news: Evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of U.S. newspapers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9-10), pages 1178-1189, October.
  5. Sendhil Mullainathan & Joshua Schwartzstein & Andrei Shleifer, 2006. "Coarse Thinking and Persuasion," NBER Working Papers 12720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Stefano DellaVigna & Matthew Gentzkow, 2009. "Persuasion: Empirical Evidence," NBER Working Papers 15298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Kevin Murphy & Andrei Shleifer, 2004. "Persuasion in Politics," NBER Working Papers 10248, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2004. "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 526-556, June.
  9. Matthew Gentzkow, 2006. "Television and Voter Turnout," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 121(3), pages 931-972, 08.
  10. Guido Imbens & Thomas Lemieux, 2007. "Regression Discontinuity Designs: A Guide to Practice," NBER Working Papers 13039, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Anderson, Simon P. & McLaren, John, 2010. "Media Mergers and Media Bias with Rational Consumers," CEPR Discussion Papers 7768, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  12. Ruben Durante & Brian Knight, 2012. "Partisan Control, Media Bias, And Viewer Responses: Evidence From Berlusconi'S Italy," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 451-481, 05.
  13. Malmendier, Ulrike & Shanthikumar, Devin, 2007. "Are small investors naive about incentives?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 457-489, August.
  14. Conley, T. G., 1999. "GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-45, September.
  15. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
  16. Harrison Hong & Marcin Kacperczyk, 2010. "Competition and Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 125(4), pages 1683-1725, November.
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