Mass media and public policy

Abstract

If more informed voters receive favorable policies, then mass media should influence policy because it provides most of the information people use in voting. This paper uses a simple model to analyze the effect of mass media provision of news on a number of policy issues: redistribution, the size of the government sector, rents and corruption, the effectiveness of lobby groups and political business cycles. It is easy to deal with such a wide range of issues because existing models of political competition often include informed and uniformed voters. Modelling mass media simply endogenizes who is informed and who is not. The paper also discusses empirical evidence and point to areas for future research.