Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-26T16:29:41.927Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Correlates of Media Freedom: An Introduction of the Global Media Freedom Dataset*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2015

Abstract

Media freedom has motivated substantial political activism, yet there are surprising gaps in the related academic literature, in part because of a lack of historic and consistent data. We introduce the newly expanded Global Media Freedom Dataset, which includes 196 countries from 1948 to 2012, and demonstrate how it can be used to test previous hypotheses and assumptions about the correlates of media freedom.

Type
Research Notes
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Department of Political Science, Dugan Hall, 201 E, 883 Broadway Street, Lowell, MA 01854-3040 USA (jenifer_whittenwoodring@uml.edu). Douglas A. Van Belle, Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington, School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies, 83 Fairlie Terrace, Room 307, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand (douglas.vanbelle@vuw.ac.nz). The authors wish to thank the associates at University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Women and Work for their thoughtful suggestions and the editors and two anonymous reviewers at Political Science Research and Methods for their helpful comments. Any mistakes are completely authors’ own. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2015.68

References

Bennett, W. Lance, Lawrence, Regina G., and Livingston, Steven. 2007. When the Press Fails. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
BP Statistical Review of World Energy. 2014. ‘BP Statistical Review of World Energy’. Available at http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review-2015/bp-statistical-review-of-world-energy-2015-full-report.pdfGoogle Scholar
Breunig, Christian. 1994. Kommunikationsfreiheiten: Ein Internationaler Vergleich. Konstanz: Universitaetsverlag Konstanz.Google Scholar
Choi, Seung-Whan, and James, Patrick. 2006. ‘Media Openness, Democracy and Militarized Interstate Disputes: An Empirical Analysis’. British Journal of Political Science 37:2346.Google Scholar
Committee to Protect Journalists. 2011. ‘Attacks on the Press’. Committee to Protect Journalists 2010. Available at www.cpj.org/attacksonthepress/, accessed 1 April 2011.Google Scholar
Czepek, Andrea. 2009. ‘Pluralism and Participation as Desired Results of Press Freedom: Measuring Media Performance’. In Andrea Czepek, Melanie Hellwig and Eva Nowak (eds), Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe: Concepts and Conditions, 3744. Bristol and Chicago, IL: Intellect Publishing and The Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Egorov, Georgy, Guriev, Sergei M., and Sonin, Konstantin. 2009. ‘Why Resource-Poor Dictators Allow Freer Media: A Theory and Evidence from Panel Data’. American Political Science Review 103(4):645668.Google Scholar
Feenstra, Robert C., Inklaar, Robert, and Timmer, Marcel P.. 2015. ‘The Next Generation of the Penn World Table’. American Economic Review (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Freedom House. 2014. ‘Freedom of the Press Survey’. Freedom House. Available at https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/freedom-press-2014.Google Scholar
International Telecommunications Union. 2015. Percentage of Individuals Using the Internet. Available at http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx.Google Scholar
IREX. 2015. Media Sustainability Index. Available at https://www.irex.org/projects/media-sustainability-index-msiGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Monty G. 2013. Major Episodes of Political Violence (MEPV) and Conflict Regions, 1946–2012. Center for Systemic Peace. Available at www.systemicpeace.org.Google Scholar
Marshall, Monty G., Gurr, Ted Robert, and Jaggers, Keith. 2014. Polity IV Project. Center for Systemic Peace. Available at www.systemicpeace.orgGoogle Scholar
McQuail, Denis. 2000. McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi: Sage.Google Scholar
Milton, John. 2010. ‘Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England 1644’. Available at www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/areopagitica/index.shtml, accessed 14 January 2010.Google Scholar
Nixon, Raymond B. 1960. ‘Factors Related to Freedom in National Press Systems’. Journalism Quarterly 37(1):1328.Google Scholar
Nixon, Raymond B. 1965. ‘Freedom in the World’s Press: A Fresh Appraisal with New Data’. Journalism Quarterly 42(1):914.Google Scholar
Reporters Without Borders. 2015. ‘World Press Freedom Index 2014’. Available at https://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php Google Scholar
Schoonvelde, Martijn. 2014. ‘Media Freedom and the Institutional Underpinnings of Political Knowledge’. Political Science Research and Methods 2(2):163178.Google Scholar
Stein, Elizabeth, and Kellam, Marisa. 2014. ‘Programming Presidential Agendas: Partisan and Media Environments that Lead Presidents to Fight Crime and Corruption’. Political Communication 31:2552.Google Scholar
United Nations. 1948. ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. Available at http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/Google Scholar
Van Belle, Douglas A. 1997. ‘Press Freedom and the Democratic Peace’. Journal of Peace Research 40:405414.Google Scholar
Van Belle, Douglas A. 2000. Press Freedom and Global Politics. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer. 2009. ‘Watchdog or Lapdog? Media Freedom, Regime Type and Government Respect for Human Rights’. International Studies Quarterly 53:595625.Google Scholar
Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer, and Van Belle, Douglas A.. 2014. Historical Guide to World Media Freedom: A Country-by-Country Analysis . Washington DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Whitten-Woodring and Van Belle supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Whitten-Woodring and Van Belle supplementary material(File)
File 289.7 KB