Independent Media, Propaganda, and Religiosity: Evidence from Poland
Irena Grosfeld (Paris School of Economics); Etienne Madinier (Paris School of Economics); Seyhun Orcan Sakalli (King's College London); Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (Paris School of Economics, EHESS, CEPR)
Abstract
Can mainstream media affect religious behavior? We study the effect of a drastic change in the media landscape on religious participation in Poland, a country with a predominExploring a drastic change in the media landscape in Poland caused by the electoral victory of right-wing populists in 2015, difference-in-differences estimates show that mainstream media can significantly affect religious participation. After 2015, news on state and pri- vate independent TV diverged due to the introduction of government propaganda. As a result, municipalities with access to independent TV continued to follow a long-term secu- larization trend, while municipalities with access only to state TV experienced its reversal. We conduct an online experiment to shed light on the mechanisms behind the effects of exposure to independent news on religiosity and document individual heterogeneity.