Work

Strategic Complementarities in a Model of Commercial Media Bias

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Media content is an important privately supplied public good. While it has been shown that contributions to a public good crowd out other contributions in many cases, the issue has not been thoroughly studied for media markets yet. We show that in a standard model of commercial media bias, qualities of media content are strategic complements, whereby investments into quality crowd in further investments and engage competitors in a race to the top. Therefore, financially strong public service media can mitigate commercial media bias: the content of commercial media can be more in line with the preferences of the audience and less advertiser-friendly in a dual (mixed public and commercial) media system than in a purely commercial media market.

Source: Games

DOI: 10.3390/g16030021

Authors: Anna Kerkhof, Johannes Munster

Institutions: Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Cologne

Language: English

Topic: Media Influence and Politics

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,930

Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft