Matthew A. Baum and Yuri M. Zhukov. 4/9/2019. “
Media Ownership and News Coverage of International Conflict.” Political Communication, 36, 1, Pp. 36-63.
Publisher's VersionHow do differences in ownership of media enterprises shape news coverage of international conflict? We examine this relationship using a new dataset of 591,532 articles on US-led multinational military operations in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, published by 2,505 newspapers in 116 countries. We find that ownership chains exert a homogenizing effect on the content of newspapers’ coverage of foreign policy, resulting in coverage across co-owned papers that is more similar in scope (what they cover), focus (how much “hard” relative to “soft” news they offer), and diversity (the breadth of topics they include in their coverage of a given issue) relative to coverage across papers that are not co-owned. However, we also find that competitive market pressures can mitigate these homogenizing effects, and incentivize co-owned outlets to differentiate their coverage. Restrictions on press freedom have the opposite impact, increasing the similarity of coverage within ownership chains.
bz_ownership_final.pdf Matthew A. Baum and Philip B. K. Potter. 4/2019. “
Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump.” Journal of Politics, 81, 2, Pp. 747-756.
Publisher's VersionDemocratic publics have always struggled to constrain their elected leaders’ foreign policy actions. By its nature, foreign policy creates information asymmetries that disadvantage citizens in favor of leaders. But has this disadvantage deepened with the advent of the Internet and the resulting fundamental changes in the media and politics? We argue that it has. The current information and political environments erode constraint by inclining constituents to reflexively and durably back “their” leaders and disapprove of opposition. These changes make it harder for citizens to informationally “catch up” with and constrain leaders because views that contradict citizens’ beliefs are less likely to break through when media are fragmented and siloed. These changes have important implications for theories concerning the democratic peace, audience costs, rally effects, and diversionary war. They may also contribute to instability in foreign policy by contributing to sudden and destabilizing changes in public opinion that undercut commitments abroad.
baum_potter_jop_preprint.pdf