Page 149 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Global Political Communication

Table 6.1 Correlations Between Media and Indicators of Good Governance

Media Access
(Logged % Papers +
Press Freedom % TVs + %Radio + Communication
(2000) % Online) (1997–9) Index
Political Stability/ R .633 .633 .727
Violence Sig. .000 .000 .000
N 140 119 120
Rule of Law R .644 .682 .763
Sig. .000 .000 .000
N 151 124 125
Government R .688 .649 .771
Efficiency Sig. .000 .000 .000
N 141 120 121
Corruption R .674 .652 .788
Sig. .000 .000 .000
N 140 119 120

Note: See technical appendix for details.
Liberal theories claim that in addition to promoting a more efficient
public-policy process, by publicizing social problems and articulating
public concerns, mass communications also function to make the au-
thorities more responsive to basic human needs. Table 6.2 and Figure 6.4
examine the correlations between communication measures and several
common indicators of human development. The results confirm that
press freedom, access to the mass media, and the combined Communi-
cation Index are all strongly related to positive development outcomes,
measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), income, economic
equality, lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy, higher spending
on public health, and greater adult literacy. These coefficients need to be
interpreted with caution, as no controls are included, and the causal in-
4
terpretation of these relationships is not unambiguous. In particular it
could well be argued that greater levels of economic prosperity produced

4 Multivariate Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression models were tested, including
the communications index and logged per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
regressed on the indicators of good governance and human development, but the
multicollinearity statistics (measured by Tolerance and the Variance Inflation Factor)
suggest that the results have to be treated with caution, as there is a strong linear
relationship among the independent variables.

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