Does it matter who controls the media? What are the democratic implications of the increasing concentration of the media industry in the hands of oligarchs? Is this a result of the weakening of the industry? What changes can we expect in the upcoming years? To answer these burning questions, Julia Cagé lays out some democratic solutions that her research finds promising to break away from editorial political lines and protect the public good that is information. Additionally, she delves into the main conclusions of her latest work, “Une Histoire du Conflit Politique”, co-authored alongside Thomas Piketty, where she investigated geosocial factors of voting behavior and its consequences for current issues like EU membership or radical party voting.

Julia Cagé is an associate professor at the Sciences Po's Deparment of economics. She is also member of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Her main fields of study are political economy, organizational economics and economic history, with a particular focus on the media.

Additional resources

• Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation: Evidence from French Local Newspapers and Elections, 1944-2014, Journal of Public Economics, 2020, 85.
• Saving the Media. Capitalism, Crowdfunding and Democracy, Harvard University Press, 2016
• Une histoire du conflit politique. Élections et inégalités sociales en France, 1789-2022, with Thomas Piketty. Paris, Le Seuil, 2023. English translation: Harvard University Press, to be published in 2024

Recorded on 11th October 2023

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series., with the help of Blanca GONZALEZ MARTINEZ, Sciences Po Master student in Political Science. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

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