The fragmentation of views in a democracy

Economics of Governance. 2021. Vol. 22. P. 215–256.

Samsonov A.

Are voters in democracies more competent if there are more media outlets? To answer this question, I provide a game-theoretic model of media capture and political persuasion in democratic countries. In the model, there are two politicians, the Incumbent and the Challenger. They co-opt the media by offering them access to information. In exchange, the media support politicians who are available for interviews or include journalists in press pools. Voters choose like-minded media. I show that if the Incumbent is sufficiently popular, then media bias in her favor weakly increases in the number of media outlets. Otherwise, media bias in the Incumbent’s favor weakly decreases in the number of media outlets. The welfare of voters weakly increases and decreases in the respective cases. The intuition is that, in equilibrium, the Incumbent can co-opt only one media outlet and ensure that enough voters read it. In this case, media outlets compete for access to the Incumbent and agree for a higher bias as their number increases.

Keywords: убеждение, голосование, Signaling, рынок СМИ, сигнализирование, media market, госрегулирование, voting games, governmental regulations, Bayesian persuasion, политическая поляризация, political polarization