Terrorism, Media Coverage, and Education: Evidence from al-Shabaab Attacks in Kenya

Abstract

We relate terrorist attacks to media signal coverage and schooling in Kenya to examine how terrorism alters the demand for education through perceived risks and returns. Exploiting variation in wireless signal coverage and attacks across space and time, we establish that media access reinforces negative effects of terrorism on schooling. Our results are robust to instrumenting both media signal and attacks. We also find that attacks raise self-reported fears for households with media access. Based on these insights, we estimate a simple structural model where heterogeneous households experiencing terrorism form beliefs about risks and returns to education. We allow these beliefs to be affected by media and find that households with media access significantly over-estimate fatality risks.

How Big Is the Media Multiplier? Evidence from Dyadic News Data

“…The idea that changes in expectations are the mechanism through which news affects economic activity is a central pillar of work on "news shocks" in macroeconomics (Ramey, 2011). Arezki et al (2017) document that news reports on resource discoveries 7 Alfano and G örlach (2022) are closest in spirit to our model. They estimate a scaling factor on the reaction to violence by households which they call the fear factor, π i , and distinguish households with and without access to the media.…”

“…This implies that some changes in violence will have little effect on activity whereas others have a dramatic effect. Such models of beliefs as mediators have already served to better explain variation in transport costs (Besley et al, 2015), child health in conflict zones (Tapsoba, 2023) and educational choice Alfano and G örlach (2022). Here we look at the importance of news coverage for the formation of these beliefs explicitly in a unified model.…”

“…show how the extent and intensity of media reporting on own-country -compared to other NATO casualties -in Afghanistan affects public support for continued military engagement across the different troop sending countries. Alfano and G örlach (2022) show that access to media content amplifies and spreads the impact of terror attacks on schooling choices. In all of these cases, changing beliefs is the mechanism behind changes in behavior.…”

Long‐term effect of childhood pandemic experience on medical major choice: Evidence from the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in China

“…As surveyed in Marquis and Tilcsik (2013), beliefs and risk attitudes formed in early life significantly influence individuals' lifelong decision-making processes, for example, CEOs' early-life exposure to fatal disasters could permanently impact corporate risk-taking (Bernile et al, 2017), the Great Chinese Famine rendered CEOs more risk averse (Feng & Johansson, 2018), parental behavior influences their offspring's saving behavior in adulthood (Brown & Taylor, 2016), rural childhood experiences reduce individuals' stock market participation (Jiang et al, 2016), and growing up in a high crime neighborhood affects future criminal behavior (Damm & Dustmann, 2014). In addition, other works have found an enduring negative effect of various adverse events or unusual shocks in (early) childhood on individuals' later decision-making, education attainment, and well-being, for example, the loss of a parent (Adda et al, 2011), extreme drought and civil war (Alderman et al, 2006;Alfano & Görlach, 2019), natural disasters (Bernile et al, 2017), famine (Meng & Qian, 2009), divorce legalization (González & Viitanen, 2017), as well as evidence of certain events affecting cohorts in utero, such as the 1918 influenza pandemic (Almond, 2006). 14 Lastly, we also join the ongoing discussion on both the short-and long-term economic impacts of a pandemic.…”

Education in the conditions of war: advantages and disadvantages

“…However, despite the significant developments, (Auzina 2002), (Berezivska 2002), (Sazonenko 2000, (Danylova 2006), (Rezvan 2012), (Akbulut-Yuksel 2014), (Akresh and De Walque 2008), (Akresh 2016), (Annan, Blattman, Mazurana, Carlson 2011), (Alfano and Görlach 2019) there are still issues that are particularly acute for scholars and require in-depth research. In particular, this includes identifying and analyzing the challenges and opportunities facing Ukraine's higher education system in wartime.…”