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A free and competitive media environment is the cornerstone of political accountability. News media provide citizens with the information necessary to assess policy performance and attribute it to the correct political actors. Many non-democratic governments attempt to manipulate citizens' beliefs about the competence and performance of political leaders by controlling the news media. In this dissertation, I investigate the extent to which this strategy is effective. I conduct a series of online experiments in Russia, a prominent modern autocracy. The three chapters of this dissertation illuminate how the public reacts to the coverage of domestic politics by state-controlled media; whether independent local media in an otherwise controlled media environment can give rise to partial accountability; and how citizens' prior experiences, knowledge, and beliefs moderate what citizens learn from the news. Chapter 1 studies a kind of coverage produced by many state-owned media: messages that target citizens’ perceptions of whether the central or the local government is responsible for policy outcomes. I report results from a survey experiment with over 4,000 respondents in Russia. The experiment randomly assigned respondents to watch news reports from Russia’s popular state-owned TV channel, Rossia-1. The reports emphasize the central government’s monitoring of road maintenance and natural disaster management – two policies that fall under the purview of local governments. My findings suggest that even though the reports did not shift beliefs about the locus of policy responsibility, they improved policy performance perceptions and increased government support. One explanation for these findings is that citizens know that the central government would only associate itself with local policies if the performance is high. I show that my findings are consistent with a Bayesian learning model in which citizens can be aware of biased media reporting strategy and update positively on policy performance and government competence when they observe central government associating itself with the policy. The broader implication is that propaganda can be effective not despite, but because citizens know that news outlets are controlled by the government. In Chapter 2, I focus on the effects of independent news outlets in an otherwise controlled media environment. Existing empirical evidence suggests that such news outlets can decrease support for the government, encourage collective action and ultimately lead to regime change. In this chapter, I show that the information provided by media outlets that are not controlled by the government can have limited effects on citizens' beliefs. I rely on data from an experiment conducted in one of the largest cities in Russia, Novosibirsk. I show residents pre-recorded local news reports on one of the most salient policy issues, healthcare delivery. Despite high compliance rates, the effects of exposure to local independent media reports are limited. I also find no evidence for treatment effect heterogeneity across a number of dimensions. Overall, these findings cast doubt on the ability of independent local media to bring about partial accountability. Chapter 3 investigates another type of coverage that is common in state-controlled media environments: messages that attribute successes in macroeconomic policy to an authoritarian leader. I propose a simple model of belief-updating in which citizens are simultaneously uncertain about the government's competence and the bias of the media source. Since macroeconomic performance is difficult to observe for citizens, the model in this chapter allows the media outlet to lie about government competence. The model makes predictions about the types of citizens who are most and least susceptible to being persuaded. I derive hypotheses about the effects of propaganda on citizens’ beliefs about government competence and media bias. To test the model's predictions, I design and implement an online panel experiment that uses news reports from the leading state-owned TV channel in Russia. Contrary to the model's predictions, I find that positive policy events presented by biased media can backfire and lead citizens to worsen their perception of policy performance and government competence.

This thesis problematizes the interplay of power and media institutions as a general difficulty in democratic societies and as a specific challenge in countries that are emerging from authoritarian regimes. Based on more comprehensive studies about power, dominance, compliance, resistance and information monopoly developed in the United States, the project approaches a particular case in modern history, namely Romania, during the period of transition following Ceausescu's overthrow, in December, 1989, and before the first free elections, in May, 1990. The bulk of the work concentrates on deconstructing political and media discourses developed throughout this period, while trying to address the role that the political and media environments had in reshaping post-communist Romania. My major argument is that, given a number of difficulties that have marked this period, ranging from economic setbacks, political ambiguities, and social confusion, the May elections have been monitored and orchestrated starting early in this period by the provisional authorities (a group of former communist bureaucrats), in tandem with a number of central media outlets. From this combination of power interests, the Romanian public was deprived of correct information on a number of issues that pertained to the future of the country and was trapped in the web of a carefully designed imagery that fostered a dissimulated totalitarian propaganda. The last part of the project advances these contentions and considers them in turn, while trying to capture how the specifics of the case inscribe themselves in larger patterns of dominance and compliance. / Master of Arts

Democratic forms of government are either consolidating democratic institutions or unraveling into authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union. Among the possible causes of each success or failure to consolidate democracy is the character of civil society and its cultural proximity to long-standing, modern state-based, consolidated democracies of the West. What impact does Western or Westernized media have upon the indigenous civil societies of Eastern Europe, and is this impact sufficient to consolidate democracy among the states of the former Soviet Union? As case studies, Eastern Europe contains two states, Estonia and Russia, where democracy has either succeeded or failed alongside the presence of exogenous cultural influence in the form of Western or Westernized television broadcast media. To what extent does the presence of Western broadcast media and associated cultural memes predict the iv consolidation of democratic political values, and how ought any impact of these memes be interpreted in the light of modernity, Eurocentricity and cultural hegemony? To account for the impact of exogenous cultural influence, foreign policy prescriptions that encourage the growth of indigenous, mimetic, democratic civic culture would appear to be an effective means of supporting democracy in the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. / by John R. Batey. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

by Xueyi Chen. / Thesis submitted in: December 1997. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-106). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Table of Contents / Abbreviations / Timeline / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction / Chapter 1.1 --- Purpose and Significance / Chapter 1.2 --- Thesis Structure / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Historical Background / Chapter 2.1 --- Development of China's Stock Markets / Chapter 2.2 --- Paradox in China's Stock Markets / Chapter 2.3 --- Stock News Reporting in China / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Literature Review / Chapter 3.1 --- The Perspective of Political Economy: An Overview / Chapter 3.2 --- The Political Economy of China's Party Press: Change and Continuity / Chapter 3.2.1 --- "In the Mao Era: The Chinese Press as Propagandist, Agitator and Organizer" / Chapter 3.2.2 --- In the Era of Economic Reform: A Paradigm Shift / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Assumptions / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Methodology / Chapter 5.1 --- Four Periods: Operational Definitions for the Interplay of State Controls and Market Forces / Chapter 5.2 --- Contexts of the Field Study / Chapter 5.3 --- Research Procedures / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Content Analysis / Chapter 5.2.2 --- In-depth Interview / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Documentary Analysis / Chapter 5.2.4 --- Participant Observation / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Stock News Reporting under State-Market Dynamics / Chapter 6.1 --- The Period of Initial Reforms: From the Early 1980s to the Mid-1980s / Chapter 6.1.1 --- Continuing State Controls / Chapter 6.1.2 --- Absence of Market and Competition / Chapter 6.1.3 --- Content Pattern: Ideological Orthodoxy / Chapter 6.1.4 --- Reporting Mode: Orthodox Reporting / Chapter 6.2 --- The Period of Continuing Reforms: From the Mid-1980s to the Late1980s / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Relaxed State Controls / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Emerging Competition / Chapter 6.2.3 --- Content Changes: Minor Departures from Ideological Orthodoxy / Chapter 6.2.4 --- Reporting Mode: Orthodox Reporting with Increased Flexibility / Chapter 6.3 --- The Period of Interrupted Development: From the Late 1980s to1992 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- The Resumption of Tight State Controls / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Strengthening Market / Chapter 6.3.3 --- "Content Changes: Greater Diversity, News Value, and Responsiveness to Readers" / Chapter 6.3.4 --- Reporting Mode: Managing the News / Chapter 6.4 --- The Period of Ideological Legitimization: From 1993 to1996 / Chapter 6.4.1 --- Shorter Control-Relaxation Cycle / Chapter 6.4.2 --- Increasing Market Pressure / Chapter 6.4.3 --- Content Changes: Increased Standardization / Chapter 6.4.4 --- Reporting Mode: Standardizing the News / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Conclusion / Chapter 7.1 --- Summary / Chapter 7.2 --- Impact of Interplay of Politics and Economics on Journalism as an Issue-Variant Relationship / Chapter 7.3 --- Future Research / Tables / References

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This thesis explores the shape, the dynamics, and the main reasons for media capture and collusion in Croatia since the second transition in 2000. Using principal-agent theory to refer to the basic relation-ship between politicians, media and citizens, I intend to explain why politicians make use of particularism - behaviour aiming at the limitation of horizontal accountability - to force the media into cooperation with politicians (media capture) or to engage in an illicit, mutually agreed deal (collusion). Located in the literatures on democratization, party research and media studies, I aim to connect these fields in arguing that intra-party dynamics such as party leaders' rootedness, contestation and the institutionalization of rules play an important role in incentivizing executive politicians to capture or collude with media outlets. The empirical outcome of the study showing drastic failures of horizontal accountability contradicts dominant narratives of Croatia's high level of democratic consolidation between 2000 and 2014 and therefore challenges the suitability of indicators primarily designed to capture the institutionalization of institutions rather than the institutionalization of particularism. Croatia is a particularly appropriate case to study in this context since none of the traditional incentives such as Europeanization, inter-party competition, a strong civil society or economic modernization can fully explain shifts in the way politicians limit or reinforce horizontal accountability of the media. In order to address this puzzle I adopt a two-pronged research strategy based on both qualitative and quantitative elements in order to reliably and validly measure the shape and development of media capture and collusion.

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A research report is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in ICT Policy and Regulation to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2016 / South Africa has a nascent community television sector, which is legislated as a tier of broadcasting. This sector is important in deepening democracy, creating access to information, giving communities the space to share information, and expanding media ownership to communities beyond the public and commercial television broadcasting sectors. Since 2007, when Soweto TV was the first community television station to be licensed, the processes towards migrating analogue to digital terrestrial television have been beset with delays and the experience of the community TV sector with respect to this migration have been not well understood. The conceptual-analytical framework for this historical study of the period 2007 to 2014 drew on the key themes of sector and institutional governance including the effectiveness of policy and regulation, technological advancement, content and services. Using a constructivist methodology the key documents pertaining to broadcast digital migration were reviewed and interviews were conducted with three community TV stations, Soweto TV, Bay TV and Cape Town TV, as well as with the policy-maker, the regulator and sector experts. The findings revealed that the community television (CTV) sector was faced with problems of sector and institutional governance not being effectively addressed in legislation and regulation, stagnation as a result of lack of spectrum in the analogue television-broadcasting dispensation and limitations on content provision. Using McConnell’s 2010 framework, analysis of the data led to the conclusion that the DTTM programme has failed with respect to the community TV sector. Advances for the CTV sector will require revision to legislation and future regulation to guide the governance of the CTV sector and the digital terrestrial television migration should be concluded without further delay, in order to enable the sector to grow. Although CTV stations are providing content to communities, the opportunity for them to make a greater impact, if digital terrestrial television (DTT) is finally launched, should be prioritised as the new technology can provide them with the scope to expand their content offerings. / MT2017

The current study is a content analysis and comparison of news articles from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The objective of this study is to explore media coverage of terrorism over the last five decades to determine the impact of religion and to compare coverage between two respected news sources that are known for their liberal (New York Times) and conservative (Wall Street Journal) view points. Using a stratified random sample, 1,832 news articles were selected between 1960 and 2006 from the two news sources of interest. The articles were read, analyzed, and categorized. Then, a qualitative analysis examined a random selection of articles pertaining to religious terrorist events. Results suggest an increase in coverage of religiously perpetrated terrorism in recent decades. Interestingly, coverage from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal showed similar patterns despite being representative of opposite ideologies. Implications are discussed. / by Heather Zurburg. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.