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Media Power

CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10094

55 Pages Posted: 25 Sep 2014

See all articles by Andrea Prat

Andrea Prat

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Finance; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: August 2014

Abstract

How much influence can news providers exert on the political process? This paper defines the power of a media organization as its ability to induce voters to make electoral decisions they would not make if reporting were unbiased. While existing media concentration measures are built by aggregating market shares across platforms, the new measure performs cross-platform aggregation at the level of individual voters on the basis of their attention shares. The paper derives a robust upper bound to media power over a range of assumptions on the beliefs and attention patterns of voters.

Computing the value of the index for all major news sources in the United States from 2000 to 2012 results in four findings. First, it cannot be excluded that the three largest media conglomerates could individually swing the outcome of most presidential elections. Second, in all specifications the most powerful media organizations are broadcasters: the press and new media are always below. Third, relative media power is well approximated by a simple function of attention shares. Fourth, a calibrated version of the model indicates that media power is much lower than the upper bound but still substantial.

Keywords: media concentration, media plurality

JEL Classification: L82

Suggested Citation

Prat, Andrea, Media Power (August 2014). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10094, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2501567

Andrea Prat (Contact Author)

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Finance ( email )

3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
United States

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

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34 References

  1. P Simon , John Andreson , Mclaren
    Media Mergers and Media Bias with Rational Consumers
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  2. P Simon , Anderson & Stephen Coate
    Market Provision of Broadcasting: A Welfare Analysis
    Review of Economic Studies , volume 72 , issue 4 , p. 947 - 972 Posted: 2005
  3. H Ben , Bagdikian
    The New Media Monopoly (7th Ed.). Beacon Press Posted: 2004
  4. David J. Balan , Patrick DeGraba , Abraham L. Wickelgren
    Ideological Persuasion in the Media
    Pages: 45 Posted: 7 Jan 2005
    Download PDF

7 Citations

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  4. Saptarshi Ghosh , Nidhi Jain , César Martinelli , Jaideep Roy
    Mood Swings, Media Coverage, and Elections
    GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 20-01 · 21 Pages · Posted: 4 Dec 2019 · Last revised: 18 Feb 2020 · Downloads: 66
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