Communication and Commitment: The Strategic Use of the Media in Autocracies.

Abstract

Why do some international events make news headlines in autocratic countries, while others do not? When do they give events prominent attention, and when do they bury them? When do they present the news with bias?

This dissertation offers answers to these questions. It evaluates two contending theories for what appears in the news: a theory of audience costs, and an original theory of a tradeoff between legitimacy and credibility. The legitimacy-credibility theory makes additional predictions about when autocrats will use bias in presentation of news. The focus of the dissertation is on China's national media, but the theoretical propositions should hold for other autocratic regimes.

The dissertation statistically evaluates several hypotheses through analysis of the {em People's Daily} from 1990-2008 and conducts case studies of international coverage of the Arab Spring (2010-2011) by China, the United States, France, Russia, and Venezuela. It also considers China's coverage of earthquakes and China's coverage of events in the US since 1949.

The dissertation finds support for the theory that autocratic leaders balance dual desires of building regime legitimacy and maintaining media credibility. Specifically, the more likely events are to be politically sensitive, the less likely leaders are to cover them directly. The effect of sensitivity is mediated, however, by public interest. As public interest in an event increases, leaders are more likely to cover the event in a biased fashion. When interest is very high, leaders cover very sensitive events directly -- the effect of liability disappears altogether. The logic is consistent for non-crisis and historical events.

The findings from this dissertation fill gaps in international relations understandings of audience costs in autocracies, as well as for constructivist arguments about how actors see the world. The research also contributes to literatures in comparative politics, including how autocracies use the media for domestic regime stability. Finally, the research helps further scholarship on China in three ways. It offers a formal logic for China's use of the media, it links China's behavior to that of other autocracies, ands it incorporates our understanding of China into broader research in international relations.