Public Media Do Serve the State: A Field Experiment

Kitamura, Shuhei; Kuroda, Toshiro

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3484318

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B Robustness1

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2019

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“…Panel B in Figure 5 shows that the gap in voting for Berlusconi remains statistically significant (in spite of the large drop in sample size) and it increases in magnitude as we decrease q . 24 To the extent that the probability of watching Mediaset decreases with signal loss, this evidence is also consistent with the observed differences in voting across matched municipalities being driven by exposure to Mediaset.…”

Section: B Robustnesssupporting

confidence: 72%

The Political Legacy of Entertainment TV

Durante

Pinotti

Tesei

2019

American Economic Review

170

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We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi’s private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset all-entertainment content were more likely to vote for Berlusconi’s party in 1994, when he first ran for office. The effect persists for five elections and is driven by heavy TV viewers, namely the very young and the elderly. Regarding possible mechanisms, we find that individuals exposed to entertainment TV as children were less cognitively sophisticated and civic-minded as adults, and ultimately more vulnerable to Berlusconi’s populist rhetoric. (JEL D72, L82, M31, Z13)

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Section: B Robustnesssupporting

confidence: 72%