Editors' Preface: Media Bias and the Effect of Patriotism on Baseball Viewership

This article establishes a 2-sided media market in which readers have heterogeneous beliefs, media outlets choose their reporting biases, and advertisement prices are determined by bargaining between media outlets and advertisers. The authors have shown that the presence of advertisers strengthens the reporting bias. The bias is increasing in the advertisers' bargaining power and is generally stronger if the advertisers can advertise in multiple outlets. Finally, the authors present an extension of the model on the formation of joint operating agreements for advertising sales among competing newspapers and show that the media bias will be mitigated.     

From Joint Experimentation to Laissez-faire: Transdisciplinary Innovation Research for the Institutional Strengthening of a Water Users Association in Khorezm,Uzbekistan

Abstract

Purpose: This article assesses a participatory action and innovation research experience, in which project researchers, farmers and staff members of a local water users association (WUA) came together to: (a) jointly test and adapt a social mobilization and institutional strengthening approach according to the local context, and by doing so, to (b) develop a locally embedded approach to the institutional strengthening of WUAs in Uzbekistan.

Design/methodology/approach: The process of interaction and innovation development was one of joint experimentation, which over time and to avoid a disproportionate dependency on external social mobilizers increasingly adopted aspects of a laissez-faire approach, eventually relying fully on members of the local community.

Findings: The findings show that the cooperation style is highly influenced by institutional and structural causes and effects in the specific context of rural Uzbekistan. Participatory approaches to the institutional strengthening of WUAs in Uzbekistan should consequently allow for a high degree of flexibility to adjust key activities and their timeframe.

Practical implications: The research findings are relevant to the lowland irrigated areas of post-Soviet Central Asia where the strengthening of WUAs is still lacking, resulting in limited participation of water users and insufficient operation and maintenance of the slowly eroding infrastructure.

Originality/value: The transdisciplinary innovation and action research experience pays special attention to the change in the style of cooperation, its institutional and structural causes and effects with regard to the ‘localizing’ of the innovation, namely a social mobilization and institutional development (SMID) approach for strengthening water users associations (WUAs) in Uzbekistan.     

Incoming Editors' Note

The authors considered a model of commercial television market with advertising with probabilistic viewer choice of channel, where private broadcasters may coexist with a public television broadcaster. The broadcasters influence the probability of getting viewer attention through the amount that they spend on programming, so that their advertising capacity depends on their own program outlays as well as on those of their competitors. A larger number of broadcasters will reduce overall capacity even when total program outlays are kept fixed, because the attention of viewers is split among a larger number of channels. The authors derive properties of equilibrium in an oligopolistic market with private broadcasters and show that the number of firms has a negative effect on overall advertising and viewer satisfaction. If there is a public channel that also sells advertisements but does not maximize profits, this will have a positive effect on advertiser and viewer satisfaction.