Misadventures of media influence in post-1988 Brazil: a theory of political information demand

Abstract The article presents a theory of political information demand, and its model is applied to the analysis of the seven Brazilian presidential elections following the transition to democracy. The initial goal of the theory is to posit the potential of the political and electoral influence of the mass media on the choices not only of so-called ordinary citizens, but also of militants, depending on the political and institutional context. In other words, why does intervention on the part of the mass media in certain circumstances seem to have a decisive influence on the choices of some individuals but not in others? How does one discern such variations without the known limits of political information supply analyses, which either do not account for the reception’s polysemy, or, which cannot be generalized when they do, on a smaller scale and with more depth. According to this theory, media influence is a function of the utility attributed to political information, which depends on the stability and intensity of voter preferences and the risk margins with which they make their decisions, which in turn depend on the overall stability and degree of political polarization of the political system. Some of the other potentials of the theory are also briefly indicated.