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THE FABLED FOURTH ESTATE:
MEDIA FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
by
Jenifer Whitten-Woodring
_____________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS)
August 2010
Copyright 2010 Jenifer Whitten-Woodring
Object Description
| Title | The fabled fourth estate: media freedom, democracy and human rights |
| Author | Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer |
| Author email | whittenw@usc.edu; jenifer.woodring@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Politics & International Relations |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2009-06-25 |
| Date submitted | 2010 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2010-08-05 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | James, Patrick |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Crigler, Ann Seib, Philip Wise, Carol |
| Abstract | For more than a century philosophers, politicians, human rights advocates and ordinary people have called for media freedom. Indeed, spreading media freedom is widely seen as a key to promoting development, democracy and human rights. The idea is that independent media will keep government in line and make life better for citizens. These are grand expectations. Many journalists have risked their lives and some have died striving to fulfill them. Yet, really, little is known as to whether free media are up to the task. That then is the focus of this study: under what conditions are the media able to improve human rights? I present a conditional theory of the effect of media freedom on protest and government respect for human rights. Specifically, I hypothesize that the effect of media freedom varies depending on the presence or absence of democratic characteristics because these determine the vulnerability of government to public opinion. Much of what we know about the effect of free media comes from studies of how they function in democracies. Certainly, leaders who are constrained by political competition, political participation and whose decision making power is limited are more likely to react benevolently to media criticism. I argue that leaders who are not restrained by these democratic characteristics are likely to respond quite differently. Similarly, citizens who live in democracies have many institutional outlets with which to push for government reform; those who live in autocracies do not. Therefore, I propose that critical news coverage is likely to promote protest in non-democracies and that leaders in these settings are likely to use repression to stifle dissent. I use statistical analyses and case studies to test my hypotheses that the effect of media freedom on protest and human rights depends on democracy.; The results suggest that in absence of democratic institutions, media freedom is associated with increased general strikes and increased repression of physical integrity rights and women’s social, political and economic rights. |
| Keyword | media freedom; press freedom; human rights; democracy; censorship; autocracy; protest |
| Geographic subject (country) | Mexico; Uganda; Uruguay; United States |
| Coverage date | 1980/2007 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m3277 |
| Rights | Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-WhittenWoodring-3773 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume32/etd-WhittenWoodring-3773.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | THE FABLED FOURTH ESTATE: MEDIA FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS by Jenifer Whitten-Woodring _____________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS) August 2010 Copyright 2010 Jenifer Whitten-Woodring |
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