Media Markets and Localism: Does Local News en Espanol Boost Hispanic Voter Turnout?

摘要

Our results indicate that Spanish-language news programs substantially boost Hispanic turnout in nonpresidential election years, the periods when the presence of local news actually changes the kind of political information available to Spanish-speakers through television. Our estimates allow a rudimentary calculation of the change in Hispanic turnout. About a quarter of Hispanics switch from English to Spanish-language local television news (Table 4), raising overall Hispanic turnout by 5 percentage points (Table 3). Hence, 20 percent of those who switch start participating.