### What Is Media Freedom?
Media freedom's role in democracy is well-established but often oversimplified with single indicators. This article analyzes ten existing measures to capture its complexity.
### The Challenge of Measurement
Existing media freedom indices struggle due to the concept's multidimensional nature, making cross-national comparison difficult and unreliable.
### A New Approach: Item Response Theory (IRT)
We treat media freedom as a latent variable using IRT with Bayesian estimation. This method creates robust data from 1948-2017 for all 197 countries studied.
### Validating Our Measurement Model
Multiple validity checks ensure our new Media System Freedom measure accurately reflects underlying political realities across diverse contexts.
### Key Findings: Replication and Refinement
Replicating Egorov, Guriev & Sonin (2009) on media freedom and natural resource wealth shows their original results don't hold once properly measuring the construct.
| Measuring Media Freedom: An Item Response Theory Analysis of Existing Indicators was authored by Jonathan A. Solis and Philip D. Waggoner. It was published by Cambridge in BJPS in 2021. |
