Media markets and politicians involved in scandals

•We study whether TV coverage helps voters punish U.S. senators involved in scandals.•Scandals hurt incumbent U.S. senators involved in scandals only in media markets centered in a given state.•Better access to political news helps voters punish politicians involved in scandals. In this paper, I stu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Social science journal (Fort Collins) 2016-12, Vol.53 (4), p.389-397
Main Author: Song, B.K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Corruption
Decision making
Elections
Media coverage
Media market
Political accountability
Politicians
Scandals
United States
Voters
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•We study whether TV coverage helps voters punish U.S. senators involved in scandals.•Scandals hurt incumbent U.S. senators involved in scandals only in media markets centered in a given state.•Better access to political news helps voters punish politicians involved in scandals. In this paper, I study whether TV coverage helps voters punish politicians involved in a scandal. Specifically, I compare the vote shares of U.S. senators implicated in scandals from 1970 through 2000 in two different types of media markets: in-state and out-of-state. An in-state media market is centered in a given state, and an out-of-state is located outside a given state. Therefore, the media consumers in an out-of-state media market receive news contents that focus on neighboring states’ politicians. I find that U.S. senators implicated in scandals receive smaller vote share in in-state media markets. The results suggest that better access to political news helps voters make more informed decisions.
ISSN:0362-3319
1873-5355
DOI:10.1016/j.soscij.2016.02.012