Media Patronage: How Authoritarian Regimes Exploit Media Competition to Shape Global Information

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes often seek to influence media beyond their borders. We argue that the financial strain facing media organizations worldwide has created an opportunity for “media patronage”: the selective support of outlets whose coverage already slants toward the regime. Media patronage does not target individual journalists or outlets but operates at the ecosystem level, increasing pro-regime market share over time. We document the Chinese Communist Party’s use of this strategy in global Chinese-language digital news, analyzing 14 million articles from 193 outlets over 25 years, and find that patronage does not change coverage but aids survival by increasing traffic and decreasing closure rates. We further show overseas patronage has domestic payoffs by diminishing the circulation of protest coverage during domestic crises. These results contribute to research on transnational authoritarian influence and media capture.