Media Freedom and the Escalation of State Violence

Abstract

When governments face severe political violence, they regularly respond with violence. Yet not all governments escalate repression under such circumstances. We argue that to understand the escalation of state violence, we need to pay attention to the potential costs leaders might face in doing so. We expect that the decision to escalate state violence is conditional on being faced with heightened threats and on possessing an information advantage that mitigates the expected cost of increasing state violence. In an environment where media freedom is constrained, leaders can deny or reframe an escalation of violations and so expect to reduce potential domestic and international costs attached to that decision. Using a global dataset from 1981 to 2006, we show that state violence is likely to escalate in response to increasing violent threats to the state when media freedom is curtailed – but not when the media are free from state intervention. A media environment that the government knows is free to sound the alarm is associated with higher political costs of repression and effectively reduces the risk of escalating state violence, even in the face of mounting armed threats.

Upping the ante without taking up arms: Why mass movements escalate demands

“…States often have the upper hand in the ‘credibility battle’ 9 in which different sides attempt to portray and establish their version of the facts pertaining to the repressive event as the truth. In particular, without a free press, the government has an ‘information advantage’ in that it can deny or reframe allegations of wrongdoing by the state (Carey, González & Mitchell, forthcoming: 4). However, when an issue or incident ‘begins to escape elite definition and control’ (Hess & Martin, 2006) and the state cannot credibly convince the public of its status as the defender of law and order, state repression can become counterproductive.…”

International Sports Events and Repression in Autocracies: Evidence from the 1978 FIFA World Cup

“…Second, the study adds to our understanding of how authoritarian regimes maintain political stability (e.g., Dukalskis 2021;Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2018;Gerschewski 2013;Svolik 2012). Third, by theorizing the influence of foreign media attention on the survival strategies of illiberal regimes, we inform debates about international naming and shaming (e.g., DeMeritt 2012; Keck and Sikkink 1998;Strezhnev, Kelley, and Simmons 2021), press freedom and the escalation of violence (Carey and Gohdes 2021;Carey, González, and Mitchell 2021;Whitten-Woodring 2009), regime propaganda (e.g., Gläßel and Paula 2020;King, Pan, and Roberts 2017;Roberts 2018), and preemptive repression (e.g., Danneman and Ritter 2014;Dragu and Przeworski 2019;Ritter and Conrad 2016;Truex 2019). Finally, the article complements a growing literature on the microdynamics of state violence (e.g., Balcells and Sullivan 2018;Hassan and O'Mealia 2018;Osorio, Schubiger, and Weintraub 2018;Rozenas, Schutte, and Zhukov 2017;Scharpf and Gläßel 2020).…”

When Censorship Works: Exploring the Resilience of News Websites to Online Censorship

“…A free and diverse press is one of the key pillars of a functioning democracy. Independent media outlets act as watchdogs (Whitten-Woodring 2009), help to keep government actors accountable (Snyder and Strömberg 2010) and reduce the likelihood of escalating state violence (Carey, González and Mitchell 2021). It is thus not surprising that most autocracies censor the press (Stier 2015) in order to increase regime compliance (Geddes and Zaller 1989) and decrease the risk of popular unrest (Edmond 2013).…”