Consequences of Media Censorship

Last registered on July 12, 2016
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Consequences of Media Censorship
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001412
Initial registration date
July 12, 2016

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
July 12, 2016, 11:15 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
July 12, 2016, 4:40 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
China
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
David Y. Yang
Affiliation
Harvard University
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Yuyu Chen
PI Affiliation
Peking University

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2015-11-15
End date
2017-12-15
Keywords
Governance
Additional Keywords
Media
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Freedom of expression is the foundation of any free, democratic, and civic society. The right to speak your mind freely on important social issues and to access uncensored information plays a vital role in the healthy development process of any society, as well as the well-being of each individual citizens in such society. However, as of 2014, only 14% of the world’s population enjoys media free from censorship. While billions of people face daily distortions of their information, we know very little regarding the impact of media censorship on these individuals, both in theory and in empirics. In this project, we aim to use a field experiment to study the consequences of media censorship in China, home to the world’s most prevalent censorship apparatus.

In particular, we plan to use rigorous quantitative analysis to answer following questions: (i) What is the impact of media censorship, on citizens’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (across political, economic, and social domains)? (ii) Why is media censorship effective, especially in the age of increasing connectedness of global information? Is the effect purely supply driven? Is the effect sustained by dampened demand in uncensored information? (iii) What does it take to undo the impact of censorship? In particular, how do people learn things that they do not know they do not know, or that they do not know they have been exposed to censored sources before?
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Chen, Yuyu and David Y. Yang. 2016. "Consequences of Media Censorship." AEA RCT Registry. July 12. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1412-2.0
Former Citation
Chen, Yuyu and David Y. Yang. 2016. "Consequences of Media Censorship." AEA RCT Registry. July 12. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1412/history/9409
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The study is consisted of a 20-months panel of subjects, and intervention treatments will be randomly assigned after the baseline survey. The main interventions involve: (a) providing access to uncensored internet to a random subset of the subjects; (b) providing nudges (including small monetary incentives) to encourage consumption of information and media outlets that are unavailable in censored environment; (c) providing social platform to facilitate sharing of information among study participants.
Intervention Start Date
2015-12-15
Intervention End Date
2017-12-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Key outcomes are measured every 5-6 months throughout the panel duration. There are 7 main categories of outcomes of interest: (a) media consumption (both recorded click data and self-reported usage); (b) knowledge on political, economic, and social topics; (c) attitudes and beliefs (regarding media censorship, political, economic and social topics of China); (d) beliefs with respect to other participants of the study; (e) coordination games (in the format of charity endorsement); (f) self-reported behaviors, career goals, etc.; (g) activities on social network (sharing of information to others, etc.).
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
There will be a total of 5 cross-sectional and 1 intertemporal treatment arms: (1) control group; (2) demand nudges only; (3) uncensored access provision; (4) uncensored access provision + demand nudges; (5) uncensored access provision + demand nudges + social platform; (6) remove provision of uncensored access for the last 5 months of the study.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
The randomization will be conducted in office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Unit of randomization is individual.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1800 students.
Sample size: planned number of observations
1800 students.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Treatment will be equally divided among the total number of participants, hence 300 per arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Given the panel structure, the study will allow detectable effect size of approximately 0.2 of one standard deviation.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Stanford University
IRB Approval Date
2015-06-18
IRB Approval Number
34318
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials