Collateral Censorship

• In Event: Strategies of Incumbent Survival: New Tradeoffs

Abstract

Censorship is commonly understood as a way for incumbents to silence critical voices or please powerful constituents. We propose in addition that censoring one media outlet can induce pro-incumbent behavior from other outlets, and that the political rewards of this shift in the media landscape can outweigh the political costs of restricting access to popular content. We formalize this trade-off in a stylized Bayesian persuasion model that guides our analysis of the Venezuelan case. When the government of Hugo Chaveź revoked the broadcast license of a major television station, voters without cable lost access. Using new data and a difference-in-differences design, we find that these voters punished Chavez at the polls—suggesting that the electoral cost of taking away popular programs exceeded the electoral benefits of restricting access to media criticism among voters without cable. But the decision likely helped Chavez in the electorate as a whole by inducing favorable shifts in the editorial lines of other outlets. Our findings underscore the relevance of collateral censorship, or indirect consequences of targeting opposition media outlets, for media freedom in competitive authoritarian regimes.

Authors

• Dorothy Kronick, University of California, Berkeley

• John Marshall, Columbia University