Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia
54 Pages Posted: 23 Mar 2009 Last revised: 20 Sep 2023
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Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia
Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia
Date Written: August 28, 2010
Abstract
This paper compares electoral outcomes of the 1999 parliamentary elections in Russia among geographical areas with differential access to the only independent from the government national TV channel. It was available to three-quarters of Russia’s population and its signal availability was idiosyncratic conditional on observables. Independent TV decreased aggregate vote for the government party by 8.9 percentage points, increased the combined vote for major opposition parties by 6.3 percentage points, and decreased turnout by 3.8 percentage points. The probability of voting for opposition parties increased for individuals who watched independent TV even controlling for voting intentions measured one month before elections.
Keywords: Mass Media, Persuasion, Voting
JEL Classification: J0, D0, H0
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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