scholarly journals Media Monopolies Increase Misperceptions about Immigration: Evidence from German Local Newspapers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanno Hilbig ◽  
Sascha Riaz
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Local News ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Heterogeneous Information ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
Indirect Exposure ◽  
Critical Policy

We examine how local news monopolies affect misperceptions about the size of the immigrant population in Germany. We propose a theoretical framework in which heterogeneous information from different local news outlets diffuses through social inter- actions. We posit that indirect exposure to information from multiple sources leads to more accurate beliefs in competitive markets. To causally identify the effect of local news monopolies on misperceptions, we exploit overlapping newspaper coverage areas as a source of exogenous variation in the number of available outlets. We estimate that local news monopolies increase misperceptions by 38%. We empirically demonstrate that the effect of media monopolies hinges on social interactions. For individuals with fewer close social contacts, misperceptions remain unaffected by local news monopolies. Our results suggest that consolidation in the market for news decreases constituents’ knowledge about critical policy issues.

October 2020–January 2021

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-228
Author(s):  
Frank Cranmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Joint Statement ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
At Home

The period under review continued to be dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Westminster Government and the devolved administrations issued a joint statement on 16 December 2020 outlining a series of relaxations on social contacts between 23 and 27 December but even so it seemed that there were mixed feelings about any relaxation. The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, continued to stress that the Scottish Government's recommendation was to celebrate Christmas at home and to keep interactions with other households to a minimum. The Welsh Government decided that social interactions should be limited to two households only, to be followed by a further lockdown from 28 December.

scholarly journals Keeping Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer? Information Networks in Legislative Politics

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nils Ringe ◽  
Jennifer Nicoll Victor ◽  
Justin H. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Multilevel Modelling ◽  
Information Networks ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Modelling Approach

The authors contribute to the existing literature on the determinants of legislative voting by offering a social network-based theory about the ways that legislators’ social relationships affect floor voting behaviour. It is argued that legislators establish contacts with both political friends and enemies, and that they use the information they receive from these contacts to increase their confidence in their own policy positions. Social contacts between political allies have greater value the more the two alliesagreeon policy issues, while social contacts between political adversaries have greater value the more the two adversariesdisagreeon policy issues. To test these propositions, we use social network analysis tools and demonstrate how to account for network dependence using a multilevel modelling approach.

What to lobby on? Explaining why large American firms lobby on the same or different issues

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-476
Author(s):  
Niels Selling
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Market Structure ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Interorganizational Relations ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Interorganizational Ties ◽  
Favorable Conditions

AbstractWhat determines whether or not firms lobby on the same policy issues? Scholars offer two broad answers to this question. Firms that are (1) similar or (2) connected through interorganizational ties target the same policy issues. In this article, I argue that the co-occurrence of these two conditions produces the opposite outcome, namely a tendency to lobby on different issues. This expectation draws on ideas from collective action theory and the literature on issue niches. From these, I derive the following assumptions: similar firms share political objectives and they should, when possible, act collectively by jointly delegating their lobbying activities. The reason for doing this is that it allows them to focus on their issue niches. However, the ability to delegate hinges on coordination and monitoring, which is facilitated by interorganizational relations. To test this proposition, I study the largest American corporations. The dependent variable is activity overlap, a measure of the extent to which firms lobby on the same issues. According to expectations, activity overlap is reduced when firms operate in the same industry and, simultaneously, enjoy favorable conditions for social interactions, such as a concentrated market structure. These results lend support to collective action theory.

Framing internal politics in a conflict situation: A study of the 2014 election campaign news in the local newspapers in the Indian-administered Kashmir region

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Arif Hussain Nadaf
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Local News ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
National Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Narratives ◽  
Local News Media

International conflict reporting and national media discourse of warring nations continue to dominate existing scholarship on media–conflict relationships. The literature on the subject lacks significant consideration towards understanding the relevance of local and sub-national media narratives in conflict situations. The existing literature on the media–conflict relationship in the conflict territory of Kashmir shows that the issue has been largely studied from the perspective of national news media in India and Pakistan. This study while engaging with the local news media in the Kashmir region, draws empirical evidence from the local newspapers in the context of the 2014 State Assembly election campaigns which took place amid unprecedented political polarization in the region. The findings from the content analysis revealed that the contested political issues between the political parties found higher resonance in the campaign news while the deliberation regarding the conflict in the region and its resolution had the least prevalence in the news discourse. This not only confirms the significant relevance of local news media and internal political dynamics in redefining the media–conflict relationship in the Kashmir conflict but also suggests the further need to engage with local and regional news narratives in conflict situations.

Decision Making in the Presence of Heterogeneous Information and Social Interactions

1998 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 1027 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Binder ◽  
M. Hashem Pesaran
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Heterogeneous Information

scholarly journals Does newspaper coverage influence or reflect public perceptions of the economy?

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 205316801773790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Hopkins ◽  
Eunji Kim ◽  
Soojong Kim
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
Local Media ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
Economic Perceptions

Citizens’ economic perceptions can shape their political and economic behavior, making the origins of those perceptions an important question. Research commonly posits that media coverage is a central source. Here, we test that prospect while considering the alternative hypothesis that media coverage instead echoes public perceptions. This paper applies a straightforward automated measure of the tone of economic coverage to 490,039 articles from 24 national and local media outlets over more than three decades. By matching the 245,947 survey respondents in the Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior to measures of contemporaneous media coverage, we can assess the sequencing of changes in media coverage and public perceptions. Together, these data illustrate that newspaper coverage does not systematically precede public perceptions of the economy, a finding which analyses of television transcripts reinforce. Neither national nor local newspapers appear to strongly influence economic perceptions.

scholarly journals Local news availability does not increase pro-social pandemic response

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
High Volume ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local News ◽  
Essential Information ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
Local Media ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Pro Social Behavior

Local media provide a bevy of pro-social and civic benefits because they provide essential information about peoples' local communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the conditions to test whether these conclusions can be extended beyond traditional political or civic domains, as the crisis had a particularly idiosyncratic spread across the United States. In a period of competing information and regulations, as well as rampant partisanship, a high volume of local media in an area should have led to a more pro-social response to the pandemic, as local residents had greater opportunities to learn about the risks specific to their communities and what their local and state officials were asking them to do. In particular, those with more local news available should have stayed home more and gone out for unnecessary travel less. I test this theory by combining county mobility data with counts of the local newspapers available in each county and other local demographic measures. After controlling for these other demographics and addressing potential confounding through weighting, I find no substantive effect of local newspaper volume on mobility change. This lack of a causal effect of local news availability on pro-social behavior uptake has implications for how we think about local media's role and efficacy in their communities.

scholarly journals Between Geography and Demography: Key Interdependencies and Exit Mechanisms for Covid-19

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Scala ◽  
Andrea Flori ◽  
Alessandro Spelta ◽  
Emanuele Brugnoli ◽  
Matteo Cinelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Compartmental Model ◽  
Critical Value ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Age Classes ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Rebound Effects ◽  
Italian Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
Mobility Matrix

AbstractWe develop a minimal compartmental model to analyze policies on mobility restriction in Italy during the Covid-19 outbreak. Our findings show that a premature lockdown barely shifts the epidemic in time: moreover, beyond a critical value of the lockdown strength, an epidemic that seems to be quelled fully recovers after lifting the restrictions. We investigate the effects on lockdown scenarios and exit strategies by introducing heterogeneities in the model. In particular, we consider Italian regions as separate administrative entities in which social interactions through different age classes occur. We find that, due to the sparsity of the mobility matrix, epidemics develop independently in different regions once the outbreak starts. Moreover, after the epidemics ha started, the influence of contacts with other regions becomes soon irrelevant. Sparsity might be responsible for the observed delays among different regions. Analogous arguments apply to the world/countries scenario. We also find that disregarding the structure of social contacts could lead to severe underestimation of the post-lockdown effects. Nevertheless, age class based strategies can help to mitigate rebound effects with milder strategies. Finally, we point out that these results can be generalized beyond this particular model by providing a description of the effects of key parameters on non-medical epidemic mitigation strategies.

Soil Organic Matter Stocks and Content—Critical Policy Issues?

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-203
Author(s):  
C. Rumpel ◽  
A. Chabbi
Keyword(s):  
Organic Matter ◽  
Soil Organic Matter ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Critical Policy

scholarly journals Editor's Note

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis R. Young
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
Heating Up

This first issue of 2012 comes at a time when the economy of Europe is still in turmoil and the presidential election contest is heating up in the United States. Both venues raise critical policy issues and concerns in which nonprofit organizations play a central part.

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