Title:      Foreign Media and Protest Diffusion in Authoritarian
Regimes: The Case of the 1989 East German Revolution

Authors:    Holger Kern

Entrydate:  2008-11-25 13:35:50

Keywords:   Germany, media, causal inference, matching,
authoritarian, collective action, social movement

Abstract:   Does access to foreign media facilitate the
diffusion of protest in authoritarian regimes? Apparently for
the first time, I test this hypothesis by exploiting a natural
experiment in communist East Germany. I take advantage of the
fact that West German television broadcasts could be received in
most but not all parts of East Germany and conduct a matched
analysis in which counties without access to West German
television are matched to a comparison group of counties with
West German television. Comparing these two groups of East
German counties, I find no evidence that West German television
affected the speed or depth of protest diffusion during the 1989
East German revolution.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=849

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