论文标题
争取关注 - 谈话广播对美国选举和政治两极分化的影响
Competing for Attention -- The Effect of Talk Radio on Elections and Political Polarization in the US
论文作者
论文摘要
本文研究了谈话无线电的影响，特别是拉什·林博（Rush Limbaugh）的效果，对美国的选举结果和态度两极分化，我们提出了一种新颖的识别策略，该策略将每个县的无线电空间视为一个市场，在该市场中，多个电台都在吸引听众的注意力。我们对竞争的衡量标准是无线电频率的空间Herfindahl-Hirschman指数（HHI）。为了解决内生性问题，我们基于县的意外频率重叠来利用竞争变化，这是基于射频竞争的整体水平。我们发现，在拉什·林博展（Rush Limbaugh）展览中，在2016年和2020年美国总统大选中，唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）的投票率更高。结合我们的县级拉什·林博（Rush Limbaugh）与个人调查数据相结合，表明，较高接触该节目的县的共和党人自我认同表达了更保守的政治观点，而在这些县的自我识别民主党人则表达了更温和的政治观点。综上所述，这些发现为当代谈话广播对政治成果的影响提供了一些最早的见解，无论是在总体和个人层面上。
This paper studies the effects of talk radio, specifically the Rush Limbaugh Show, on electoral outcomes and attitude polarization in the U.S. We propose a novel identification strategy that considers the radio space in each county as a market where multiple stations are competing for listeners' attention. Our measure of competition is a spatial Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) in radio frequencies. To address endogeneity concerns, we exploit the variation in competition based on accidental frequency overlaps in a county, conditional on the overall level of radio frequency competition. We find that counties with higher exposure to the Rush Limbaugh Show have a systematically higher vote share for Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Combining our county-level Rush Limbaugh Show exposure measure with individual survey data reveals that self-identifying Republicans in counties with higher exposure to the Show express more conservative political views, while self-identifying Democrats in these same counties express more moderate political views. Taken together, these findings provide some of the first insights on the effects of contemporary talk radio on political outcomes, both at the aggregate and individual level.
