Publication Date

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Committee Members

Liam Anderson (Committee Chair), Carlos Costa (Committee Member), Lee Hannah, Jr. (Committee Member)

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Abstract

This research is to show that populist parties in the European Union attempt to oppress the traditional established media as soon as they come in to power. The multiple regressions test the hypothesis of a negative relationship between the political power of populist parties and degree of media freedom. For the assessment and clarification of the relationship between the level of media freedom and the political power of populist parties, political rights and civil liberties country scores from Freedom House's Freedom in the World reports, GDP per capita from World Bank, corruption perception indexes from Transparency International, and Grigorii V. Golosov's formula of effective number of parties are included as control variables. The proposed hypothesis enjoys empirical support in the context of Eastern Europe and both quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate that populist parties seek to tame the media as soon as they get the power to do so.

Page Count

88

Department or Program

Department of Political Science

Year Degree Awarded

2018


Share

COinS