Assaults on the Fourth Estate: Explaining Media Harassment in Africa

Corruption Is Bad News for a Free Press: Reassessing the Relationship Between Media Freedom and Corruption

“…While the authors empirically link corruption to lower freedom levels in the media environment, we think an approach in the Geddes (:38) tradition that breaks down the bigger concept of media freedom into component processes offers a better approach to understand a country's media environment. More recent studies, for instance, seem to follow this advice through examining government‐perpetrated attacks against media (VonDoepp and Young, ), self‐censorship among journalists (Stanig, ), and social media censorship in China (King et al., ). In addition, the Global Media Freedom dataset (Whitten‐Woodring and Van Belle, ) generates data starting with a simple theoretical criteria: ”Can media criticize governments?” We wish to follow this path by theorizing on a smaller component of media freedom.…”

“…Media freedom's broader literature links it to vital factors regarding citizens participation, finding lower press freedom levels strongly correlate with lower levels of political knowledge, political participation, and voter turnout (Lesson, ). In addition, government‐perpetrated attacks against media are more likely to increase in transitional democracies during key political events such coup attempts, major protests, and proposed constitutional reforms that give a leader more power (VonDoepp and Young, ) . Attacks against media have the dual purpose of silencing investigative journalists directly and inducing self‐censorship in others who consider publishing government critiques.…”

“…In recent years, press freedom's study has taken a more prominent role in the political communication and political science literature, especially in the comparative context of democratization and transitional regimes. Scholars have also begun to study the nuances of media systems' regional characteristics around the world (Lucas, ; VonDoepp and Young, ; Stein and Kellam, ; Stanig, ). New data and a focus on the component parts of media freedom allow researchers to expand and push this line of research forward.…”

Is constitutionalized media freedom only window dressing? Evidence from terrorist attacks

“…Within autocracies, he finds that elected autocrats, monarchies and military regimes have the freest media, whereas communist ideocracies have the least free media. VonDoepp and Young (2012) find that media harassment intensifies when governments confront more uncertainty, such as facing major protests, coups and conflict onsets, while find that only successful coups against democracies result in less media freedom. Kellam and Stein (2016) are concerned with the reasons for curbing media freedom in presidential democracies.…”

Defining the playing field

“…In the last 10 years, online media and mobile technology have gradually expanded the variety of sources and availability of media in Sub-Saharan Africa (Wasserman 2011, p. 4). However, access is contingent on social status and place of residence, creating vast differences in the importance of various media sources (Hyden and Okigbo 2002;VonDoepp and Young 2013). Three broad categories of media are important: private, public, and PSC 12 media.…”