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LIT-1323: Media capture, captured: a new computational methodology to measure deteriorating media freedom

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Properties5
StatusActive — read 2026-10-21 (NOTE-1047) in full, from the published version in the University of Amsterdam's repository; worth reading for a way to measure media capture outlet by outlet and month by month, by placing each outlet between regime-owned outlets and uncoercible opposition outlets on agenda and tone, and for its definition of capture as coerced change in editorial choices. Read it knowing that the score measures alignment, not coercion, that the poles are assumed fixed, that it is validated on three Nicaraguan outlets only (THEORY-836), and that the main text reports no uncertainty for the scores.
Version2
Tagssociety-and-governance
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1047 — Barnehl and Schumacher — Media capture, captured
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-836 — Scored between Nicaragua's regime-owned outlets and its exiled or online opposition outlets, on the prevalence of topics relevant to the regime's legitimacy and on the tone of sentences mentioning Ortega, the three nominally independent national outlets with web output moved toward the regime pole in agenda over 2018–2022, Canal 14 most and Radio Corporación least, and Canal 14's tone score fell from about .8 to below .5 by early 2022 while Radio Corporación's stayed near 1

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Barnehl, H.-M. & Schumacher, G. (2024). Media capture, captured: a new computational methodology to measure deteriorating media freedom. Democratization 31(7): 1536–1563. doi:10.1080/13510347.2024.2331694.

Read 2026-10-21 in full (NOTE-1047). The Nicaraguan measurement is held as THEORY-836.

Why this is here

A25: “Agenda and tone are observable indicators of possible capture. They are not themselves a complete causal identification of capture.” Bears on TERM-066: the observable signature of capture is one of the three research objects A25 said to keep apart.

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