Tell me how to vote: Understanding the role of media in modern elections

In this thesis, I combine multiple research methods (theoretical modeling, laboratory experiments, and numerical calibrations) to study the political impact of media in modern elections. The consequences of biased news for elections have received dramatically widespread concerns since the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. This drives urgent demands for a deeper understanding of the roles media play in modern elections. The existing studies focused primarily on empirically documenting media’s electoral influences using observational field data. The thesis complements the literature by developing a novel theoretical framework to understand media’s influences on voting behavior and election outcomes, and by refining our theoretical insights using results from carefully designed laboratory experiments. A key insight of the thesis is that news released by media allows voters to not only infer the relative appeal of candidates, but also to gauge the competitiveness of elections. In large elections the former information determines party vote shares and the election outcome, while the latter information drives voter turnout