Media Influence and Political Power
Evidence from the Rise of Berlusconi
- When?
- Wednesday 3 October 2012, 16.00
- Where?
- 40 AD 00
- Open to:
- Staff, Students, Public
- Speaker:
- Andrea Tesei (Queen Mary, University of London)
The School of Economics would like to welcome Andrea Tesei to speak
Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of the diffusion of commercial television on political behavior and electoral competition in the context of Italy.We exploit differences across municipalities in the early availability of Silvio Berlusconi's private TV network, Mediaset, attributable to geomorphologic characteristics and controlling for the endogeneity of transmitters location and power. We document that municipalities that had access to Mediaset channels prior to 1985, displayed significantly higher electoral support for Berlusconi's party in 1994, when he first run for office.
Our results suggest that pre-1985 exposure to Mediaset increases center-right vote shares by 1 to 2 percentage points. This effect is very significant and robust to several specications and falsification tests. In particular, placebo tests show that pre-Mediaset exposure is not correlated with the vote share of any other party - both on the right and on the left - in any elections before or after 1994.