How Generous Are Foreign Aid Donors in Media Development?

Abstract

Media assistance has arisen as a significant tool of media development and democracy initiatives, particularly in the last 20 years. While the research in foreign aid and democracy aid is rich, studies on media assistance are quite limited in number due to its novelty. Moreover, existing research on media assistance usually focuses on the role and/or impact of media assistance on recipient nations' media capacity or media independence. Differing from this existing research, this study focuses on the donors of media assistance and asks how generous foreign aid donors are in media development and what type of donors provide media assistance. Using data from the OECD, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, and Comparative Political dataset, this study finds that democratic countries, countries with higher independence in their media, and governments with center ideology are more likely to provide a higher amount of media assistance compared to others.