Working Papers
Abstract: Does mainstream media actively amplifies politicians' social media statements, and does this amplification influence individuals' political opinions? I first study cable news coverage of Donald J. Trump's tweets using novel high-frequency coverage measures for CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. I show that Trump was able to set the agenda of cable news outlets through Twitter, with cable outlets covering his tweets minutes after these had been posted. I then leverage a large public opinion survey to investigate the impact of TV coverage of Trump's tweets on public opinion. I find that CNN's primetime coverage of Donald J. Trump's tweets caused CNN viewers to decrease their approval of President Trump hours after coverage. Conversely, primetime coverage on Fox News resulted in an increase in President Trump's approval ratings among Fox News viewers. These findings shed light on a new channel through which social media impacts political opinions.
Work in Progress
In short: Past media literature has measured bias on television news only through verbal and image-based measures. Audio measures, while crucial to rate TV coverage - by definition, a three-dimensional object - are not to be found. I leverage on computer vision and computer audition techniques to rate this third dimension of TV coverage, across and within cable outlets.
Status: draft in progress.In short: Past literature on the agenda-setting power of the news media is based mainly on correlational evidence. In this paper, I map within-day content measures for TV news to U.S. congress-members' social media statements, to provide a first causal assessment of the agenda-setting power of traditional mass media over the agenda of politicians.
Status: draft in progress.
Working Papers
with Diogo Leitão, João Pereira dos Santos and José Tavares, 2019, CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP13990.
with José Tavares, 2016, CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP11654.