The Media and Democratization: A Long-Term Macro-Level Perspective on the Role of the Press During a Democratic Transition

Figures & data

Figure 1. Salience of the idea of democracy in the press (three scores) and democratization.

Table 1. Summary of key findings.

1. There Was a Covariation Between the Press and Democratization Using autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modeling to account for autocorrelation and the trend in the time series, analysis indicated that there was a covariation between increases in the salience of the idea of democracy in the press and increases in the level of democratization. In fact, the strength of the year-to-year increase in the salience of the idea of democracy in the press was positively related to the year-to-year increase in the level of democratization. The weight of the evidence seems to support H1.

2. The Press Predicted Future Increases in Democratization Furthermore, and possibly even more importantly, we found that a higher salience of the idea of democracy in the press in a given year “Granger-caused” (i.e., prospectively predicted) future increases in the level of democratization. (Conversely, democratization did not prospectively predict future increases in the salience of the idea of democracy in the press.) Therefore, the weight of the evidence seems to support the idea of the press as a predictor of future changes in democratization, supporting H2. Acknowledging the fact that the cause must precede the consequence, this finding is consistent with the idea of the press as a causal agent of change (i.e., a long-term macro-level media effect). However, there are limitations in terms of causal interpretations.