When Do Local Media Report Information Facilitating Political Accountability?

• In Event: Information and Accountability

Abstract

An informed electorate is critical for electoral accountability. However, while a large literature has focused on the effects of access to news media, little is known empirically about when media outlets choose to provide voters with indicators of their incumbent party's performance in office. In partnership with a local NGO, we seek to explain and bolster the relatively low supply of incumbent performance information in Mexico using a three-year and six-period clustered field experiment exploiting differential treatment intensity within media market clusters. Since the experiment concluded in 2018, we have been processing data scraped from 1,604 experimental newspapers and radio outlets that will constitute an unprecedented corpus of text and audio news reports covering an entire electoral cycle. Our design will enable us to estimate several quantities of interest: (i) the extent to which search costs affect whether radio stations and newspapers report the results of independent audit reports detailing mayoral malfeasance in office; (ii) how the direct and indirect effects of providing media outlets with information vary with media market competition and proximity to elections; and (iii) the extent to which outlets learn to acquire information for themselves after receiving a prior treatment or local spillover. We anticipate that our findings will shed light on an essential but understudied condition - the supply of relevant incumbent performance information - required for voters to be able to hold governments to accountable.

Authors

• Horacio Alejandro Larreguy, Harvard University

• Christopher Lucas, Washington University in St. Louis

• John Marshall, Columbia University