Information, media and elections: incentives for media capture

Abstract

Media play an essential role in democracy by making available valuable information for electoral decisions. In a framework of political economy of mass media, I inquiry the possibility of capture by rent-seeking o cers in a heterogeneous electoral environment. This allow me to discuss when relevant information is traded, when government captures media and what e ect this has on political outcomes. I nd media capture to be a pervasive phenomenon which implies minimum costs on politicians' side. However, incentives to corruption decrease if the possibility of being detected is introduced, leading to a more intermediate result with respect to the one obtained by Besley and Prat (2006). I show that information is a fundamental element for electoral choices and that any attempt to increase quality of news and to reduce information's costs can have positive effects on the selection of politicians