1

Paper

Politicians and the Press: Who Leads, Who Follows? Bartels, Larry M. Uploaded 08-23-1996 Keywords media agenda-setting president Congress Bosnia Medicare NAFTA Whitewater VAR Abstract his paper examines the interplay between politicians and the press in setting the national policy agenda. The data for the analysis consist of daily counts of executive branch activities, congressional activities, New York Times stories, local newspaper stories, and ABC News coverage of Bosnia, Medicare, NAFTA, and Whitewater during the first three years of the Clinton administration. Vector autoregressions suggest that all three media outlets (and the politicians themselves) followed the lead of the executive branch on Bosnia and NAFTA and of Congress on Medicare and Whitewater. However, New York Times coverage led political activities even more than it followed them, with especially strong agenda-setting effects for NAFTA and Whitewater. The independent agenda-setting power of ABC News was substantially less than that of the Times, but still considerable, while local newspapers tended, by and large, to follow the lead of politicians and the national news media. Prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September 1996.

2

Paper

Exploiting a Rare Shift in Communication Flows to Document News Media Persuasion: The 1997 United Kingdom General Election Ladd, Jonathan Lenz, Gabriel Uploaded 07-30-2008 Keywords Media persuasion endorsements campaigns elections matching causal inference Abstract Using panel data and matching techniques, we exploit a rare change in communication flows -- the endorsement switch to the Labour Party by several prominent British newspapers before the 1997 United Kingdom general election -- to study the persuasive power of the news media. These unusual events provide an opportunity to test for news media persuasion while avoiding methodological pitfalls that have plagued previous studies. By comparing readers of newspapers that switched endorsements to similar individuals who did not read these newspapers, we estimate that these papers persuaded a considerable share of their readers to vote for Labour. Depending on the statistical approach, the point estimates vary from about 10 percent to as high as 25 percent of readers. These findings provide rare, compelling evidence that the news media exert a powerful influence on mass political behavior.

3

Paper

Foreign Media and Protest Diffusion in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of the 1989 East German Revolution Kern, Holger Uploaded 11-25-2008 Keywords Germany media causal inference matching authoritarian collective action social movement Abstract Does access to foreign media facilitate the diffusion of protest in authoritarian regimes? Apparently for the first time, I test this hypothesis by exploiting a natural experiment in communist East Germany. I take advantage of the fact that West German television broadcasts could be received in most but not all parts of East Germany and conduct a matched analysis in which counties without access to West German television are matched to a comparison group of counties with West German television. Comparing these two groups of East German counties, I find no evidence that West German television affected the speed or depth of protest diffusion during the 1989 East German revolution.

4

Paper

Opium for the Masses: How Foreign Media Can Stabilize Authoritarian Regimes Kern, Holger Hainmueller, Jens Uploaded 04-11-2007 Keywords instrumental variables causal inference local average response function LATE media effects East Germany democratization regime legitimacy Abstract In this case study of the impact of West German television on public support for the East German communist regime, we evaluate the conventional wisdom in the democratization literature that foreign mass media undermine authoritarian rule. We exploit formerly classified survey data and a natural experiment to identify the effect of foreign media exposure using instrumental variable estimators. Contrary to conventional wisdom, East Germans exposed to West German television were more satisfied with life in East Germany and more supportive of the East German regime. To explain this surprising finding, we show that East Germans used West German television primarily as a source of entertainment. Behavioral data on regional patterns in exit visa applications and archival evidence on the reaction of the East German regime to the availability of West German television corroborate this result.

5

Paper

Unpacking the Black Box: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies Imai, Kosuke Keele, Luke Tingley, Dustin Yamamoto, Teppei Uploaded 07-01-2010 Keywords causal inference direct and indirect effects mediation moderation potential outcomes sensitivity analysis media cues incumbency effects Abstract Understanding causal mechanisms is a fundamental goal of social science research. Demonstrating whether one variable causes a change in another is often insufficient, and researchers seek to explain why such a causal relationship arises. Nevertheless, little is understood about how to identify causal mechanisms in empirical research. Many researchers either informally talk about possible causal mechanisms or attempt to quantify them without explicitly stating the required assumptions. Often, some assert that process tracing in detailed case studies is the only way to evaluate causal mechanisms. Others contend the search for causal mechanisms is so elusive that we should instead focus on causal effects alone. In this paper, we show how to learn about causal mechanisms from experimental and observational studies. Using the potential outcomes framework of causal inference, we formally define causal mechanisms, present general identification and estimation strategies, and provide a method to assess the sensitivity of one's conclusions to the possible violations of key identification assumptions. We also propose several alternative research designs for both experimental and observational studies that may help identify causal mechanisms under less stringent assumptions. The proposed methodology is illustrated using media framing experiments and observational studies of incumbency advantage.