What Following the News Buys, and Where It Buys Most
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68570/8m3b6597Keywords:
media exposure, political participation, press freedom, information, Afrobarometer, AfricaAbstract
News consumption is expected to make citizens both more critical of government and more politically active. Across 39 African countries and 53,444 respondents in Afrobarometer Round 9, it does only the second. A standard deviation of news consumption raises contacting a councillor or member of parliament by 2.5 percentage points, protest by 1.1 and turnout by 0.8, while leaving disapproval of the president, demand that public documents be published, and belief that elections remove bad leaders statistically indistinguishable from zero. The pattern holds under survey weighting, logit estimation, and in 32 of 38 national samples for contacting. What varies is where news is politically consequential. Interacting consumption with V-Dem freedom of expression, news predicts presidential disapproval at 3.2 points where media are least free and −0.9 where they are most free, and the same reversal appears for demand and for protest. Following the news mobilises everywhere and politicises only where the state is trying to prevent it.
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