New findings suggest public broadcasting TV increases voter turnout in Norway.
Data & Methods
This analysis uses detailed data on television rollout in Norway during the 1960s and 1970s, combined with municipality-level voter turnout records from four decades. Geographic variation in when communities gained access to TV serves as a natural experiment to identify causal effects.
Individual-level panel data from three successive election studies further support these findings. The introduction of this new political information medium triggered increased interest and resulted in statistically significant turnout gains, contrasting with Matthew Gentzkow's earlier research on commercial television.
