Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
2016
Abstract
Media freedom is typically viewed as crucial to democracy and development. The idea is that independent news media will facilitate free and fair elections and shine a spotlight on corruption—thereby serving as a fourth estate. Yet political leaders often justify restricting media freedom on the grounds that irresponsible news coverage will incite political violence—potentially undermining government and in effect acting as a fifth column. So is media freedom a force for democracy or a source of civil conflict? We hypothesize that the effect of media freedom on civil conflict is conditioned by a country’s level of intolerance. Specifically, we predict when social intolerance is low, media freedom will discourage domestic conflict because the tone of the news coverage will reflect the level of tolerance and ameliorate any inflammatory coverage. In contrast, we predict that high levels of social intolerance will fuel and be fueled by inflammatory news coverage if the media are free, thereby promoting civil conflict. We test our hypotheses across countries and over time drawing from World Values and European Values Surveys and the Global Media Freedom Dataset and find that the combination of media freedom and high social intolerance is associated with increased civil conflict.
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Hutchison, Marc L., et al. “When the Fourth Estate Becomes a Fifth Column: The Effect of Media Freedom and Social Intolerance on Civil Conflict.” The International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 21, no. 2, Apr. 2016, pp. 165–187, doi:10.1177/1940161216632362.
Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1940161216632362
Author Manuscript
This is a pre-publication author manuscript of the final, published article.
Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable
towards Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth in our Terms of Use.