Assoc. Prof. Andrew Dickens, PhD

Political Impact of the Canadian Media Landscape

During his visit to CES, Andrew Dickens will work with Mathias Bühler on a joint project studying the impact of media content on the political engagement of citizens and politicians in Canada. The Canadian media landscape evolved as a mixed system of public and private broadcasters, where content systematically varied across broadcaster type. By design, the public broadcaster represents the interests of all citizens and produces informational content with broad national appeal, whereas private broadcasters tend to service local communities and produce informational content specific to the local region they service. The arrival of Canadian television provides an interesting opportunity to explore these content differences. Until 1958, policy prioritized expanding coverage to the largest number of Canadians by inhibiting competition in television markets – Canadians received public or private television, but never both, allowing the researchers to empirically separate the political impact of publicly produced national content from privately produced local content. Their findings suggest a differential response to these content differences: voter turnout is increasing in the localness of informational content, and yet debate among politicians around important national issues is decreasing in the localness of informational content. This research project is currently funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.

Mr. Dickens’ main research interests are in historical political economy, the political economy of mass media and long-run economic growth, whereas his methodological research interests fall under the purview of applied microeconomics. As a research tool, he commonly employs geographic information system (GIS) software to develop unique datasets applicable to the research problem at hand.

Andrew Dickens is an Associate Professor of Economics at Brock University in Canada. He earned his PhD in Economics from York University in Toronto, during which time he was a Visiting Research Fellow at Brown University. He also holds an MA in Economics from the University of Toronto and a BA in Economics from the University of Manitoba. His research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Economic Journal and the Journal of Economic Growth.