Selective Control : The Political Economy of Censorship

Corduneanu-Huci, Cristina ; Hamilton, Alexander

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: CENSORSHIP;    MEDIA;    ANTI-CORRUPTION;    CORRUPTION;    PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8556
RP-ID  :  WPS8556

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In recent years, alongside democraticbacksliding and security threats, censorship is increasinglyused by governments and other societal actors to control themedia. Who is likely to be affected by censorship and why?Does censorship as a form of punishment coexist with or actas a substitute for reward-based forms of media capture suchas market concentration or bribes? First, this argues thatcensors employ censorship only toward certain targets thatprovide information to politically consequential audiences,while allowing media that caters to elite audiences toreport freely. Second, the paper hypothesizes that coercionand inducements are substitutes, with censorship beingemployed primarily when bribes and ownership fail to controlinformation. To test these hypotheses, a new data set wasbuilt of 9,000 salient censorship events and theircharacteristics across 196 countries between 2001 and 2015.The study finds strong empirical support for the theory ofmedia market segmentation.