Media coverage of large countries at the 2015 Milan EXPO

Abstract

An inertial bias or status quo bias in media industries, as in other markets, means the perpetuation of a certain behaviour or attitude. If mass media frequently address certain issues, an inertial bias means that such issues will be treated again independently of their absolute or relative newsworthiness. This paper studies the inertial media bias in relation to the Milan Expo 2015, an event where, in theory, all participant countries ought to have been considered equal. The empirical analysis considers the articles and reports on the Expo of the two most important online Italian newspapers, Repubblica and Corriere della Sera between May and October 2015. The estimates show that the newspapers devoted more articles and words to the largest countries, while the slant towards the richest countries was less evident. In addition, the tone of the media reports regarding large and rich countries was more positive.

Keywords

• media markets
• media bias
• newspapers
• inertia
• status quo
• expos