NICEP Seminar: Eric Melander (University of Birmingham)

This is an in-person event

Title: Voting power and the press:  Evidence from US newspapers

Abstract: It is well-understood that the media can shape politics. Can political forces also shape media markets? We use the U.S. “redistricting revolution” following the 1962 Baker v. Carr Supreme Court ruling as a natural experiment to study this question. In the wave of redistricting of state legislative districts after the ruling, some counties gained voting power at the expense of others. Using a staggered event study design and a novel county-level panel dataset on newspaper media, we explore the consequences of changes in newspaper markets’ relative political importance. Following redistricting, gaining counties see increased circulation per capita, a shift in editorial board compositions towards coverage of state-level politics and an increased volume of political content. We provide evidence that these findings are in line with supply-driven responses to a shifting political landscape.