Related Literature

The present article contributes to the literatures on the political economy of media capture and authoritarianism. In a highly influential article on the first topic, Besley and Prat (Reference Besley and Prat2006) assume that the incumbent can make transfers to media outlets to suppress a bad signal they may have about them. They find that plurality in the media can act as a safeguard against media capture. Egorov, Guriev, and Sonin (Reference Egorov, Guriev and Sonin2009) investigate the relationship between press freedom and resource endowment. They argue that dictators in resource-poor countries rely on an efficient bureaucracy to generate revenue and that free media—while potentially hurting the incumbent—can help the incumbent provide stronger incentives to the bureaucracy. They find robust empirical support for their theory that oil reserves are associated with lower press freedom in nondemocracies, whereas this relationship is flat for democracies. Trombetta and Rossignoli (Reference Trombetta and Rossignoli2020) study a model with rationally ignorant voters and show theoretically and empirically that greater competition in the media industry may make capture easier. Gehlbach and Sonin (Reference Gehlbach and Sonin2014) examine a setting in which capture can occur in two ways. In their model, the government can pay transfers to independent media or seize control. The authors find that controlling for media ownership, higher commercial revenues lead to greater press freedom; however, they may also induce the government to nationalize media outlets to save on costs of capture, which may cause a decline in press freedom. Our model contributes to this literature on the determinants of media capture by considering the role of the internet and social media.

There are few articles on the question of the internet's effect on press freedom, and they provide conflicting findings. Petrova (Reference Petrova2008) studies a model which suggests that higher internet penetration leads to greater media freedom, and more so in democracies. Using panel data up to 2004, she finds support for her claims in democracies but not in autocracies. Our results corroborate her findings for democracies but suggest that social media may have an opposite, detrimental effect in other contexts. Also related is Lorentzen (Reference Lorentzen2014), who studies press freedom in an autocratic context. He provides qualitative evidence that the central government in China allows investigative journalism, in part, to keep tabs on local politicians and replace those who are corrupt. The government weighs this benefit of press freedom against the risks it poses. Lorentzen also studies an extension on the effects of online media, assuming it acts as a substitute for traditional media. As the government needs to keep constant the total amount of information citizens receive, it tightens control of traditional media as internet access increases. Thus, Lorentzen argues that higher internet penetration induces the government to restrict press freedom and finds that citizens are equally informed before and after the advent of the internet in his particular setting. In comparison, the present manuscript investigates how greater connectedness may lead to higher press freedom or result in more capture across contexts. This allows us to recover the results of both Petrova (Reference Petrova2008) for countries with low rents relative to costs of capture, and Lorentzen (Reference Lorentzen2014) for others, though our mechanism is distinct from both. We show that when fewer rents are available for extraction, press freedom may improve because capture becomes prohibitively expensive. In contrast, with higher rents, press freedom may fall because the government can extend censorship to media outlets whose influence grows as internet penetration goes up. Thus, our model finds that the advent of the internet leads to citizens who are politically more or less informed, depending on the incumbent's incentives to remain in office relative to the increased costs of capture.

Also related to our article is the literature on authoritarianism and authoritarianization. Frantz (Reference Frantz2018, 87) defines authoritarianization as when leaders who came to power via democratic elections abuse their power to “disadvantage and sideline opponents and consolidate control.” She notes that in the post-Cold War era, authoritarianizations have made up 38 percent of all democratic collapses, second only to coups. In other words, democracies are increasingly falling apart through incumbent takeovers (Levitsky and Ziblatt Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt2018). The mechanisms that lead to a decline in press freedom in our model are closely related to many such authoritarianization processes. Thus, our model provides a microfoundation for media capture in autocracies.

In our model, an incumbent wishes to keep uninformed a portion of the citizenry to remain in power. Implicit in this setup is the assumption that public opinion is of importance even in autocracies. Indeed, an important finding from the literature on authoritarianism is that many autocratic regimes today also integrate features of democratic governance in their system of rule (Gandhi and Lust-Okar Reference Gandhi and Lust-Okar2009). In modern dictatorships, it is increasingly common to see multiparty elections that occur on a regular basis (Bratton and Van de Walle Reference Bratton and Van de Walle1997). While only 59 percent of all dictatorships held regular elections with multiple political parties in 1970, the rate increased to 83 percent in 2008 (Kendall-Taylor and Frantz Reference Kendall-Taylor and Frantz2014). That such regimes are considered authoritarian despite holding elections is in no small part due to media capture, whereby incumbents preclude an informed electorate and hence tilt the playing field in their favor. Magee and Doces (Reference Magee and Doces2015) document the serious obstacles the media typically faces in authoritarian regimes. The information they do release is often biased and intentionally inaccurate, even about basic information, such as economic growth rates. In a time-series, cross-country empirical analysis, Stier (Reference Stier2015) finds that autocracies have lower press freedom scores than democracies, and that within autocracies, electoral autocracies tend to allow for more press freedom while communist regimes tend to have the least free press. Our contribution to this literature is to show how—despite early optimism—the effect of the internet on press freedom depends on the amount of rents available for the incumbent to extract.

Model

In this section, we introduce a two-period Bayesian game. Our model involves: (1) an incumbent politician, I, whose type is private information; (2) mainstream and the alternative media outlets M and A; and (3) a unit mass of voters, V, divided into two groups as followers of the mainstream media (mainstream voters, V _M) and as followers of the alternative media (alternative voters, V _A).

In the first period, the incumbent is exogenously in power, facing a challenger. The incumbent needs the support of at least ζ fraction of citizens to retain office. For concreteness, we interpret citizens' support as voting and take ζ = 1/2 as a simple majority; however, our model encompasses other types of political action and different values of ζ.Footnote ³ Both the incumbent and the challenger can be one of two types, “good” or “bad.” A good politician produces a payoff of 1 to voters and a bad politician produces a payoff of 0. The incumbent and the challenger are drawn independently from a common pool, and we denote by γ ∈ (0, 1) the prior probability that a politician is good. At the start of the game, the incumbent and media outlets observe the type of the incumbent. The voters can only learn about the incumbent's type before their decision through the news reports of the media outlets.

For ease of exposure, we assume that there are two media outlets, one mainstream and one alternative. The media outlets are identical in their strategy sets and preferences. They only differ in their audience size, denoted by σ _k for k ∈ {M, A}. At the start of the game, the mainstream outlet reaches a group of voters large enough for the incumbent to retain office, but the alternative outlet does not, σ _M ≥ ζ > σ _A, and each voter follows exactly one outlet, σ _M + σ _A = 1. If the incumbent is good, the outlets have no verifiable news and publish the null signal, $s_k = \emptyset $ for k ∈ {M, A}. If the incumbent is bad, media outlets have a verifiable signal (s _k = b) that they can publish and inform their audience of the incumbent's type.Footnote ⁴ Before they make their editorial decisions, however, the incumbent can try to influence them.

Real-world incumbents have a broad set of tools to influence the editorial decisions of media outlets. These tools may be in the form of carrots to outlets who adopt editorial strategies in line with the incumbent's objectives (e.g., access, cash transfers, and business contracts) and sticks against those who do not (e.g., fines and closures). To capture this wide range of possible strategies in a simple way, we model this interaction between the incumbent and the outlets as a bargaining game. After the outlets observe their type, the incumbent can make an offer of a transfer t _k to outlet k ∈ {M, A} in exchange for them suppressing the verifiable signal. Here, a high t _k may correspond to larger monetary transfers paid out to outlets in the case of carrots or to sparing them from shutting down in the case of sticks. For the sake of generality, we impose no structure on the form of these transfers except to require that stronger incentives to suppress are more costly for the incumbent to provide. This means that, for example, bigger bribes are more expensive to pay out and shutting down a defiant outlet is more costly than fining it. The outlets observe the offers made to each. They then simultaneously decide whether to publish the news or to suppress it in exchange for transfers from the incumbent. The incumbent and the outlets observe what both outlets publish. If one outlet publishes the news about the incumbent's type while the other one suppresses it, the informed voters may share the news on social media, causing some fraction of the uninformative outlet's audience to switch to the informative outlet. This switch decreases the audience share of the uninformative outlet while increasing that of the informative outlet.Footnote ⁵

Thus, an outlet facing an uninformative competitor chooses between the opportunity to steal some market share versus transfers from the incumbent, whereas an outlet facing an informative competitor chooses between holding on to their market share versus receiving transfers but losing some audience to their competitor. The offers to the two outlets are unobserved by the voters, as are whether the outlets accept the incumbent's offers. When indifferent, outlets accept the incumbent's offer. For ease of notation, we normalize the audience-related profits of both outlets at the start of the game to 0.

If both outlets accept the offer, or if both reject it, the game moves to the election stage. If one of the media outlets accepts the offer and the other does not, the followers of the informative outlet (informed voters) decide whether to share their signal via social media. In this decision, the benefits of sharing information about a bad incumbent are weighed against the potential costs of expressing political, antigovernment opinions online. Depending on the fraction of informed voters who share the signal, ν ∈ [0, 1], and a variable we call connectedness, θ ∈ ℝ, some uninformed voters switch to the informative outlet, observe the verifiable signal about the incumbent's type, and become informed. Specifically, the number of informed voters grows by f(ν, θ) > 0, where f is continuous and increasing in both arguments. The rest of the uninformed voters stay uninformed.

We use the term “connectedness” to refer to factors that influence the likelihood with which messages reach voters. These are both technological factors, such as internet penetration, and social factors, such as political trust and the prevalence of fake news. We take connectedness to be a random variable of the form θ = μ + ψ.Footnote ⁶ Since technological variables are measured relatively precisely, we interpret the expected level of connectedness, μ ∈ [0, 1], to be equal to the level of internet penetration. The error term, drawn from a normal distribution with zero mean and finite variance, can be interpreted as the uncertainty regarding other factors that influence information flows through the social network, and is unobserved.

The fraction of informed voters who share the news is determined in equilibrium. The benefits of sharing may be in the form of material gain, where more clicks correspond to larger advertisement revenue. They may also be in the form of expressive or glow utility derived from sharing one's political opinion with an audience, where a larger audience leads to more engagement, such as “likes” and “comments.” Regardless, when connectedness increases, an informed voter can reach a larger audience and therefore derives a larger utility from sharing. As connectedness is positively correlated with internet access, in our model, this means that, all else equal, higher internet penetration implies larger expected benefits from sharing. For ease of notation, we further assume that this relationship is linear, that is, the expected benefit informed voters derive from sharing information via social media linearly increases with internet penetration, μ.

There are also expected costs associated with sharing the bad signal about the incumbent, given by the expression c. This captures the severity of the punishment and might range from zero (e.g., no punishment), to relatively low (e.g., getting fired from public service) to extremely high (e.g., death). The expected utility of sharing is thus μ − c and the expected utility of refraining is normalized to 0. When indifferent, informed voters choose to refrain. In the Online Appendix, we explicitly model coordination between informed voters within a global games framework. The equilibrium behavior of that model is qualitatively similar to the simple decision problem that we present in this paragraph. In the main text, we stick with this simpler setup for ease of presentation.

At the final stage of the game, voters choose between the incumbent and a challenger of unknown type. The incumbent retains office if and only if they receive the support of at least ζ fraction of citizens and receive office rents denoted by r > 0, regardless of their type. Thus, the payoff of the incumbent is $r-\sum\nolimits_{k\in K}^{} {t_k} $ if they stay in office and $-\mathop {\sum\nolimits_{k\in K}^{} {t_k} }\limits_{} $ if they do not, where K is the set of media outlets who accept the incumbent's offer. The payoff of an outlet k who publishes the signal about the incumbent is σ _kf(ν, θ) if its opponent suppresses the news because of the growth in k's market share, and k's payoff is normalized to 0 if its opponent also publishes. The payoff of an outlet k who chooses to suppress the news is equal to t _k if its opponent also suppresses, and it is equal to t _k − σ _−kf(ν, θ) when the opponent publishes because of the lost market share.

Analysis

In this section, we solve the game step by step. We consider perfect Bayesian equilibria in undominated strategies. We start by solving for optimal voting behavior as a function of beliefs, followed by optimal sharing on social media and the interaction between the incumbent and the media outlets, respectively. Then, we summarize the unique equilibrium of the game and present comparative statics.

Equilibrium Voting Behavior

For a voter who observes that the incumbent is bad (that is, s _i = b), the expected utility of reelecting the incumbent is 0; bad signals are verifiable and all voters who observe them believe that the incumbent is bad with probability 1. The expected utility of electing a challenger of unknown type is equal to the probability that the challenger is good, γ. As we are looking at equilibria in undominated strategies, any voter who receives the signal that the incumbent is bad votes against the incumbent. On the other hand, if a voter observes no signal (that is, $s_i = \emptyset $), they believe that the incumbent is good with probability weakly greater than γ. This is because observing the null signal is never more likely when the incumbent is bad. Thus, a voter who receives the null signal votes for the incumbent.Footnote ⁸

Therefore, any voter who observes the signal that the incumbent is bad votes for the challenger and any voter who does not observe any signal votes for the incumbent. The only means by which the voters can observe the incumbent's type is through the media outlets. As σ _M ≥ ζ > σ _A, when they vote together, the votes of V _M are decisive in an election. Hence, the outcome of the elections ultimately boils down to whether V _M receive any signal about the type of the incumbent.

If the mainstream outlet publishes the news that the incumbent is bad, the incumbent loses the election with certainty. If neither M nor A publishes, then all voters vote for the incumbent and they win the election. If only the alternative outlet publishes and the mainstream outlet suppresses, then the outcome of the elections depends on the outcome of the social media game. This is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1.

Media outlets' strategies result in different electoral outcomes

Equilibrium Media Capture

The payoff of a media outlet depends not only on its action, but also on whether the other outlet publishes or not. When both outlets publish, or neither do, they receive a normalized payoff of 0. When one publishes and the other suppresses, the former's audience share grows by fraction f(ν, θ) as a subset of the latter switch to it after being convinced on social media. The payoff of an outlet k that publishes is thus:

$$EU_k( {{\rm publish}} ) = \left\{{\matrix{ {0, \;} & {{\rm if\;}-k{\rm \;publishes}} \hfill\cr {\sigma_kq( \mu ) , \;} & {{\rm if\;}-k{\rm \;suppresses}} \cr } } \right., \;$$

where we let q(μ) ≡ E[f(ν, θ)].

When an outlet instead suppresses, its payoff is the transfer offered by the incumbent minus some audience share lost if the other outlet publishes the news:

$$EU_k( {{\rm suppress}} ) = \left\{{\matrix{ {t_k-\sigma_{{-}k}q( \mu ) , \;} & {{\rm if\;}-k{\rm \;publishes}} \hfill\cr {t_k, \;} & {{\rm if\;}-k{\rm \;suppresses}} \cr } } \right..$$

In equilibrium, when a media outlet is indifferent between accepting or rejecting an offer by the incumbent, it accepts. Thus, making an offer to an outlet that is strictly greater than its opportunity cost is strictly dominated for the incumbent. Moreover, capturing A only is a dominated strategy because it would lead to the incumbent paying transfers and still losing the election. Thus, the incumbent never makes such an offer in equilibrium. Finally, making an offer that an outlet would reject in equilibrium is equivalent to offering 0. These are summarized in the following lemma:

When both media outlets are captured, the bad incumbent is reelected for certain, but they have to pay transfers to both outlets. When only M is captured, the transfers are lower and the incumbent is reelected with probability 1 − p(μ). When neither outlet is captured, the bad incumbent does not pay any transfers but is certainly overturned. These are summarized in the following lemma:

Comparative Statics

The equilibrium level of press freedom depends on the incumbent's payoffs, as summarized in Lemma 2. When the probability p(μ) that the signal about the incumbent's type spreads to a critical mass of voters is 0, complete capture is never optimal. Substantively, if the incumbent has little reason to fear their supporters switching to an antagonistic outlet, our model suggests that they prefer to confine pressure to the mainstream outlet only. This would be true when there are few means of communication between citizens or when such communications are often dismissed due to a lack of trust. Here, partial capture allows the incumbent to keep a greater share of extracted rents for themselves. In contrast, when p(μ) ≥ σ _M, partial capture is never optimal because the risk of being overturned is too high. When this is the case, the incumbent effectively chooses between no capture and complete capture.

In between these two extremes, when 0 < p(μ) < σ _M, all three strategies are viable. The incumbent's optimal strategy then depends on: the relative costs of capture, q(μ); the probability of being overturned under partial capture, p(μ); and office rents, r. Specifically, for sufficiently low rents from office, r < σ _Aq(μ)/(1 − p(μ)), no capture is optimal for the incumbent because the payoff of holding office does not cover the costs of capture. For sufficiently high rents, r > σ _Mq(μ)/p(μ), the incumbent prefers complete capture because the payoff of holding office is too high to risk being overturned. For intermediate values of rent, the incumbent prefers partial capture. Figure 2 shows these different regions of the incumbent's optimal strategies as a function of office rent.

Figure 2.

Higher connectedness shrinks the set of parameter values leading to partial capture.

For two different levels of expected connectedness μ̄ > μ, the expected utilities of the incumbent from their three equilibrium strategies are plotted against low, middle, and high office rents, when Condition 1 holds and 0 < p(μ) < σ _M. The best response of the incumbent is the upper envelope in each plot. The green (yellow) shaded region indicates levels of office rents such that the incumbent switches from partial capture to no (complete) capture when connectedness goes up.

Given the incumbent's equilibrium strategies, we can derive the primary comparative statics of our model: the effect of internet penetration on press freedom. It can be seen from Lemma 2 that the incumbent's payoffs from both complete and partial capture decrease with internet penetration. Intuitively, this is because the probability of news spreading via social media goes up when internet penetration rises, which increases both the risk of being overturned and the costs of capture. This means that when rents from staying in office are low, an increase in internet penetration may free the media by making capture too costly for the incumbent.

The effect of a rise in internet penetration on the relative payoffs of complete capture versus partial capture is less obvious. On the one hand, greater internet penetration pushes the incumbent toward complete capture because it increases the risk of being overturned if the social media game is played. However, it also makes complete capture less attractive because outlets' opportunity cost of suppressing increases as their potential market gain grows. Thus, it becomes more costly for the incumbent to capture both outlets. Whether the risk effect or the cost effect dominates depends on the following condition:

Condition 1 implies that the risk of being overturned increases faster than the costs of capture as connectedness goes up. When this is the case, an incumbent who prefers partial capture may switch to complete capture as internet penetration increases. Thus, the set of rents for which the incumbent chooses partial capture shrinks as μ goes up, forcing an incumbent who previously preferred partial capture to either switch to complete or no capture. Figure 2 provides a visual representation of these forces at work.

When Condition 1 holds, the effect of social media on press freedom is ambiguous. Increased internet penetration may improve press freedom, as the risk of being overturned becomes too high and capture too expensive for the incumbent to continue pressuring the mainstream outlet. However, it may also have the opposite effect: it may induce incumbents to increase their hold on media by also capturing alternative outlets to ensure news cannot spread via social media. Figure 3 presents a simulation that captures the relationship between internet penetration and press freedom when Condition 1 holds. The details of our simulations can be found in the Online Appendix.

Figure 3.

When Condition 1 holds, higher internet penetration may hurt or improve press freedom.

When Condition 1 holds, higher internet penetration may improve press freedom by making partial capture too costly and inducing incumbents to release mainstream outlets in low-rent countries (green), or may hurt it by making partial capture too risky and inducing incumbents to capture alternative outlets in medium-rent countries (yellow). High-rent countries (blue) remain in complete capture.

In Figure 3, press freedom scores (25 for complete capture, 50 for partial capture, and 75 for no capture, with random noise added to enhance readability) on the vertical axis are plotted against internet penetration levels, μ, on the horizontal axis. Colors capture the terciles of uniformly distributed office rents, r, for 160 simulated countries: blue refers to countries with high office rents, yellow to intermediate office rents, and green to low office rents. For each simulated country, we draw 16 values of internet penetration from a beta distribution. The simulations show that under Condition 1, as internet penetration increases, most low-rent countries switch from partial capture to no capture. In contrast, most countries with intermediate levels of rent switch from partial capture to complete capture. Countries with high office rents remain in complete capture.

In contrast, when Condition 1 fails, the cost of capturing both outlets grows faster than the risk of being overturned. Then, internet penetration has the unambiguous effect of improving press freedom. This is because the transfers required to capture media outlets grow faster than the risk that a sufficiently high fraction of uninformed voters become informed and overturn the incumbent. Here, greater internet penetration cannot induce an incumbent to switch from partial to complete capture. The only possible change is that countries move toward more press freedom. Figure 4 presents a simulation of the relationship between internet penetration and press freedom when Condition 1 fails.

Figure 4.

When Condition 1 fails higher internet penetration improves press freedom.

When Condition 1 fails, higher internet penetration improves press freedom by making both partial and complete capture too costly, inducing incumbents to move from partial to no capture (green) or move from complete to partial or no capture (yellow). High-rent countries (blue) remain in complete capture.

A comparison of our simulations with actual data can inform us about whether Condition 1 is justified for our model. By studying empirically whether increased internet penetration is universally associated with improved press freedom outcomes or not, we can get a sense of how the risk of overturn increases in μ relative to costs of capture. Our empirical analysis in the Online Appendix finds that internet penetration has a robust negative relationship with press freedom in countries that were “Partly Free” in 2000 according to Freedom House's Freedom of the Press report (see Tables 2–5 in the Online Appendix). These suggest that, at least in countries where there were serious concerns about press freedom prior to the advent of the internet, incumbents' fear of information spillovers may have risen faster than the costs they faced in capturing the media.

As discussed earlier, office rents relative to costs of capture determine the incumbent's strategy in equilibrium. This, in turn, decides the country's level of press freedom. Thus, when comparing our simulations to data, we split our simulation by terciles of r to match countries' press freedom status in 2000.Footnote ⁹ This classification is supported by cross-country studies which find that press freedom is inversely related to office rents (Brunetti and Weder Reference Brunetti and Weder2003). This is because in countries with high levels of press freedom, it is harder for incumbents to extract rents relative to the costs of capturing media outlets. Similarly, Stier (Reference Stier2015) finds that democracies tend to have higher press freedom scores than autocracies, and among the latter group, electoral autocracies tend to have more free press than others.Footnote ¹⁰

Overall, Condition 1 is consistent with the observed data because higher internet penetration is associated with better or worse press freedom depending on their status in 2000, rather than an unambiguous improvement as a failure of Condition 1 would suggest. Thus, we expect media in countries with high penetration to be generally either very free or not free at all. In contrast, media in countries with low penetration should have smaller cross-country variance. As internet penetration increases, countries that have intermediate levels of press freedom should move toward either extreme.

Greater press freedom leads to bad incumbents being identified and overturned more often. Therefore, voter welfare increases as press freedom goes up. These points are summarized in the following proposition:

The Cases of Turkey and Tunisia

Throughout the text, we have presented examples from around the world, including Turkey, Tunisia, Peru, Russia, China, and Mexico. In this section, we will discuss the first two countries in more detail and in relation to the assumptions and findings of our model. As will be detailed in the following, both Turkey and Tunisia experienced a change in media freedom in the early 2010s as a result of a series of events in which a minority successfully used social media to amplify the voices of media outlets with otherwise limited reach. There are many similarities between Turkey and Tunisia. Despite these similarities, in the years following the aforementioned events, media freedom decreased in Turkey while it increased in Tunisia. Hence, these two countries present a comprehensive pair of examples for the two opposite directions in which media freedom can move in our model after an increase in internet penetration.

When applicable, we detail later the specific form the components of our model take for Turkey and Tunisia, such as: mainstream and alternative media outlets; tools incumbents use to influence the editorial decisions of media outlets; ways in which media outlets suppress information and how their audience shares respond to this; how voters use social media to share information provided by informative media outlets; and costs associated with sharing information on social media. Additionally, we discuss how these cases relate to our assumptions.

We start with the Turkish case. Before June 2013, when most citizens still did not have access to the internet, press freedom in Turkey resembled a partial capture equilibrium. Then, incumbent Prime Minister Erdoğan focused his efforts on capturing mainstream media, overlooking smaller media outlets. As a result, a series of events damaging to the incumbent were covered solely by alternative media outlets with limited reach. Their market share surged after social media users started discussing and referring others to them. Erdoğan's government survived this tumultuous episode and subsequently extended capture to alternative media outlets, thus switching from partial to complete capture in response to rising connectedness. In their 2014 report, Freedom House moved Turkey from the “Partly Free” to “Not Free.”

June 2013 was marked by violent clashes between the police and protesters trying to prevent the demolition of a park in the heart of Istanbul. Propelled by widespread anger toward Erdoğan's authoritarian style, the so-called “Gezi Park” protests multiplied across the country. The number and the broad scope of protesters, the government's response, and the use of extreme force by the riot police were unprecedented during Erdoğan's tenure. The protests made headlines all around the world. However, in Turkey, the way mainstream media ignored the events took center stage instead. For example, while CNN International was livestreaming the hundreds of thousands of protesters in a mist of teargas, CNN's Turkish version, CNN Türk, was broadcasting a documentary about penguins. One channel was showing a beauty pageant; another, a show about food. The mainstream media—TV stations, newspapers, and their websites—was remiss throughout the first few days of the protests.

In line with the predictions of the partial capture equilibrium of our model, the most accurate and extensive coverage of the events took place in a few alternative media outlets and social media (Chrona and Bee Reference Chrona and Bee2017). People used social media to alert fellow citizens about a few TV stations and newspapers that reported on the events, channeling people to these sources for reliable information. An example of this is Halk TV, an obscure TV station that streamed the protests live with commentary in Turkish. Twitter users in Turkey soon started referring to the channel and Halk TV became a “trending topic.” Soon, others flocked to the news channel to find out about the protests, rapidly tripling its audience size (Bonini Reference Bonini2017; Farro and Demirhisar Reference Farro and Demirhisar2014). Similarly, the antigovernment daily Sözcü saw a 21 percent increase in sales during the week following the start of the protests. In terms of our model, these constituted lost audience shares for the competing, “mainstream” media outlets.

A probe into Turkish media yields why some outlets chose to cover these protests, whereas most others did not. Both Halk TV and Sözcü were universally acknowledged to be antigovernment. Many of Sözcü's editors moved there when fired from their previous outlets, allegedly due to government pressure.Footnote ¹¹ Most of Sözcü's readers also switched to the antigovernment daily after their previous newspapers changed their stances to accommodate the government.Footnote ¹² Eventually, Sözcü became a haven for the disillusioned secularists in an increasingly polarized society. Its staunch adherence to old Kemalist principles made it unlikely to appeal to anybody else. As such, it was not a government target for capture. Instead, the government focused its attention and pressure on mainstream media outlets that can reach people whose votes can be influenced by the news they consume (Corke et al. Reference Corke2014). Throughout his tenure, Erdoğan used a variety of sticks and carrots to capture these mainstream outlets.Footnote ¹³

One carrot is preferential treatment in public procurement in Turkey's centralized economy. Most media outlets in Turkey are owned by large holding companies. Often, these companies earn the bulk of their profits from other interests, such as energy or construction. They buy media outlets not for commercial revenues—which are limited in Turkey—but for a means to show their loyalty to the incumbent. Erdoğan was in charge of both the Privatization High Council (ÖİB), which gives privatization approvals, and the Housing Development Administration (TOKİ), which distributes billions of dollars each year through construction contracts, as well as several other institutions that tender public sector contracts. Staying on good terms with the government was key to getting lucrative business contracts, and owning a sycophantic media outlet helped.

In contrast, critical mainstream media outlets were disproportionately subject to tax inspections. In one case, the government fined a media company a record USD2.5 billion over tax irregularities. This equaled about 80 percent of the valuation of the entire parent holding company. To settle its bill, its owner sold two of the highest-circulating newspapers in Turkey to another holding company with strong ties to the government. Tax authorities promptly agreed to restructure the fine (Esen and Gumuscu Reference Esen and Gumuscu2016).

In the backdrop of these developments, and concurrently with the rest of the developing world, internet penetration was rising in Turkey. Household surveys show that internet access went from about 30 percent in 2009 to about 50 percent in 2013 to just under 90 percent in 2019 (TurkStat 2019). In terms of our model, the prior expectation of connectedness in Turkey was not high enough to induce complete capture before 2013. Under partial capture, people who consumed alternative media had a chance to take the news of widespread Gezi protests—and the ensuing violent police crackdown—to social media and try to convince those who followed mainstream media to switch. Citizens flocked to social media to draw attention to what was happening in Taksim and elsewhere (Chrona and Bee Reference Chrona and Bee2017). During the first three days of the protests, Twitter saw 10 million tweets that included such protest hashtags as #occupygezi and #direngeziparki (Barbera, Metzger, and Tucker Reference Barbera, Metzger and Tucker2013). Most of these tweets came from inside the country, with about half from Istanbul.

From hiring online commentators to spread progovernment messages to blocking access to social media platforms, the government took many steps to stem citizens' ability to inform one another via social media (Esen and Gumuscu Reference Esen and Gumuscu2016). Soon after Erdoğan called Twitter a “menace to society,” progovernment media outlets started targeting public figures for tweeting in support of the protests. More directly related to our model was the government's escalation of media capture. Halk TV was fined for “harming the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people” by broadcasting coverage of the Gezi Park protests (Hürriyet Daily News 2013). Journalists were assaulted, jailed, and fired from their outlets after government henchmen—and sometimes Erdoğan himself—called their owners to complain about a piece they wrote (Hürriyet Daily News 2014). A total of 143 journalists lost their jobs in 2013 alone, followed by 339 more in 2014.

For a brief period in 2013, social media provided voters in Turkey with an opportunity to share the verifiable signal of Erdoğan's intolerance of opposition behind the veneer of democracy he presented until then. Many shared the news and were punished for it, implying that the expectation of connectedness was greater than the cost of sharing. However, Erdoğan managed to cling on to his job; he defied the protesters' wishes for his resignation and managed to win 2014's presidential election. In terms of our model, this means that although the informed voters persuaded some uninformed voters, they failed to persuade a sufficiently large group to switch to an informative outlet. Having survived this period, Erdoğan subsequently switched from a partial capture to a complete capture strategy by extending his reach to these previously informative outlets.

Similarly, the Tunisian media was under partial capture until the Arab Spring by the then incumbent President Ben Ali. In line with our model, during the Arab Spring, social media users in Tunisia helped share news from outlets with comparatively smaller reach, resulting in Ben Ali's ouster. Afterwards, Tunisia gradually improved the state of its democracy as well as its press freedom scores, moving from the partial capture equilibrium of our model to no capture. Over the years, this improvement was reflected in a series of important landmarks including: (1) a Nobel peace prize awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet in 2015; (2) Tunisia's support for the Information and Democracy Initiative in 2018; and (3) the creation of the Press Council of Tunisia in 2020. We next discuss these developments in greater detail.

On December 18, 2010, the Arab Spring was sparked in Tunisia by the first protests that occurred in response to Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest of police corruption and ill-treatment. The demonstrations quickly spread to other Arab countries and soon ended the 23-year reign of President Ben Ali. It has been widely argued that social media had a significant effect on the Arab Spring, enabling the public to circumvent state-controlled media channels and facilitating the swift spread of information to raise awareness about alleged crimes against humanity (Mellen Reference Mellen2012). The Ben Ali government tried a range of strategies to suppress the spread of information on social media: they hired censors to block or filter social media sites, and tried to hack into Facebook and steal user passwords. Such efforts, however, had little success. Web-savvy Tunisians employed a range of strategies to bypass government restrictions, and the sheer volume of sharing by protesters on the internet made it virtually impossible for the Ben Ali regime to suppress information short of shutting down the internet (Schraeder and Redissi Reference Schraeder and Redissi2011).Footnote ¹⁴ Activists also interacted with international media and news organizations, such as Al Jazeera or BBC News Arabic (Bossio Reference Bossio2014). Since the domestic media was regarded as biased, such international broadcasters that are harder for the incumbent to capture became the trusted sources of news (Hänska-Ahy and Shapour Reference Hänska-Ahy and Shapour2013). Howard et al. (Reference Howard2011) emphasize the importance of satellite TV coverage during the Arab Spring and note that Al Jazeera TV enjoyed the highest profile and the most influence regionally as a key information broker, partially due to its innovative new-media team that converted its traditional news product for use on social media sites. Schraeder and Redissi (Reference Schraeder and Redissi2011) note that Al Jazeera was the first international news outlet to run the story of the initial protests in Sidi Bouzid. Hence, in relation to our model, the Tunisian experience shows that international media can sometimes also take the role of the “alternative outlet.”

Since the Arab Spring, political life in Tunisia has been transitioning, though slowly, toward constitutional democratic governance, marking Tunisia as the success story of the Arab Spring.Footnote ¹⁵ A 2011 decree by the Ministry of the Interior banned the “political police.” In the same year, the Ennahda Movement, formerly banned under the Ben Ali regime, came out of the election as the largest party and former dissident and veteran human rights activist Moncef Marzouki was elected president. The postrevolution government in Tunisia institutionalized several changes that enabled the emergence of a pluralism of opinion in the media. A number of new newspapers and reviews published since the beginning of the revolution were granted authorization in 2011. Since then, foundations have been laid for the Tunisian media's transformation into professional, free, autonomous, and impartial entities. In 2018, Tunisia, along with 11 other states at the Paris Peace Forum, undertook the Information and Democracy Initiative, promoting democratic principles and freedom of information in the online public arena. Most recently, September 2020 marked the creation of the Press Council of Tunisia, the first independent press council in Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The effect of such developments is also visible in the significant increase in Tunisia's international press freedom scores. According to Reporters Without Borders, Tunisia's press freedom ranking improved dramatically between 2011 and 2020, from 164 to 72, making it the country with the most free press in the MENA region. Similarly, in Freedom House's press freedom ranking, Tunisia went from 185 to 115 between 2011 and 2017.

When comparing the Turkish and the Tunisian experiences, our model points to two important parameters. The first is connectedness. Although internet penetration was higher in Turkey in 2013 than in 2011's Tunisia, we argue that connectedness was lower in Turkey because social trust was lower and political polarization was higher. Thus, despite both countries being under a partial capture regime and informed voters in both countries choosing to share news on social media, the opposition in Tunisia had much better success in persuading others and eventually replacing the incumbent. In support of this claim, Angrist (Reference Angrist2013) notes that in Tunisia's case, masses of citizens from diverse socioeconomic classes and political divisions were able to cooperate in sustaining physical protests across most of the state's territory for a significant period of time.Footnote ¹⁶ Perhaps more importantly, the secularists, the Islamists, and the widely respected Tunisian labor federation worked in collaboration to support the opposition. Even the Tunisian army and members of Tunisia's long-ruling hegemonic political party refused to stand with Ben Ali. In contrast, many Turks continued believing that the Gezi protests were a foreign conspiracy intended to weaken Turkey, a propaganda message that was widely circulated in mainstream media (Yilmaz and Shipoli Reference Yilmaz and Shipoli2021). As a result, voters in Turkey remained bitterly divided: a survey of Turkish citizens in the spring of 2014, only a few months after the Gezi protests, found that Erdoğan had a job approval of 59 percent; and he won 2014's presidential election with 52 percent of the vote.

The second important dimension of comparison that helps explain the divergent paths of the two countries is rents from office relative to the costs of capture. In 2013, Turkish gross domestic product (GDP) was around 21 times that of Tunisia (USD957.8 billion to USD46.25 billion) and Turkish government spending was around 16 times that of Tunisia (USD134.27 billion to USD8.63 billion), implying that rents from office were likely higher in Turkey. Furthermore, the prevalence of international media outlets in Tunisia that broadcast in Arabic, such as Al Jazeera and BBC News Arabic, likely made complete capture prohibitively expensive in Tunisia. In contrast, there were no international traditional media outlets that broadcasted or printed in Turkish, and most Turkish voters did not consume news media in other languages, making complete capture easier in comparison. Overall, with increased internet penetration, the incumbent's equilibrium strategy switched to complete capture in Turkey and to no capture in Tunisia.