The supposed and the real role of mass media in modern democracy

A range of different scientific disciplines are explored for what they might contribute to an understanding of the economic and other factors that influence mass media, and how the media in turn influence the political climate and the democratic process in modern democracies. The contributions from the different disciplines are combined into an integrated model of a causal network. This tentative model shows that fierce economic competition forces the media to produce entertaining stories that appeal to people's emotions. Preferred topics include danger, crime, and disaster, which the media select in ways that make the audience perceive the world as more dangerous than it is. This influences the democratic process significantly in the direction of authoritarianism and intolerance. More generally, the competitive news media select and frame stories in ways that hamper the ability of the democratic system to solve internal social problems as well as international conflicts in an optimal way. These effects are unintended consequences of the structure of the media market. The empirical support for each element in the theory, as well as for the integrated model as a whole, is discussed in an appendix.