A Voz do Dono e o Dono da Voz: a influência da propriedade de rádios locais nos resultados das eleições municipais.

Abstract

The literature on media and politics has grown over time, even though, at the same pace, so have conflicting positions about media's influence over electoral processes. In this thesis, we assume a natural experiment emerging from the recent expansion of local radio stations throughout Brazil's countryside and their appropriation by local politicians to evaluate the impact of these radios' property on the electoral performance of their owners. We have also made use of Federal Government's involuntarily published data to investigate the impact of clientelism on community radios grants. Based on paired samples from one observation group and one control group, and after the application of the difference-in-differences methodology, we have demonstrated that the control group have experienced a 2.23% growth in average electoral performance. Meanwhile, among the members of the observation group composed by 134 candidates who owned local radios and ran in mayoral elections - the impact was a growth of 6.27% in their average voting outcome. Such data demonstrate that obtaining a grant to operate a local radio is a factor that raises significantly the electoral performance of its owner. Furthermore, after we analyzed 17.422 community radio grants applications, we observed that the patronage of these applications by congressional representatives or senators raised their chances of approval in 2.14 times when compared to those who had not obtained this kind of support. These findings confirm the existence of intense clientelism on community radio granting policies and contribute to the building of knowledge around the influences of media in electoral processes.