The Political Economy of Local Journalism and Democratic Accountability: Evidence from India

Paper Abstract

This project examines an important, widespread, but strikingly understudied political actor in India--local vernacular journalists ("stringers"), who make up the grassroots base of the journalism industry in India and supply stories upward to newspapers, TV stations, and online media outlets. Stringers have significant discretion over what stories they cover in their localities. Why do they cover some stories and forgo others? And what are the downstream consequences of these decisions for local political accountability? Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, and a unique survey sample of over 800 stringers across two Indian states, this study will illuminate how stringers--through everyday choices over what stories to cover--shape outcomes in local governance. We plan to present our pre-analysis plan (PAP) prior to conducting a survey of stringers, which will include a survey experiment that assesses the underlying preferences of stringers over different types of local new stories.

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