{"id":{"repo_id":"mississippi","oai_identifier":"oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-1782"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/mississippi/oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-1782","repository":{"repo_id":"mississippi","name":"University of Mississippi","base_url":"https://egrove.olemiss.edu/do/oai/"},"display":{"title":"On Mass Media, State Capacity, And Civil Conflict","abstract":"State capacity scholars contend that a state's capabilities objectively predict its likelihood of civil conflict onset. The state capacity literature argues that the likelihood of civil conflict increases when military strength, regime revenue, and/or political institution coherence decrease. However, for this theoretical causal linkage to hold, the state capacity literature must assume that prospective rebels possess complete regime capabilities information; whereas, prospective rebels will know to rebel when the regime has a sufficiently weak, low revenue, and/or an incoherent political institution. I begin my dissertation by contending that incomplete information is more indicative of prospective rebels' informational abilities. Next, I consider how incomplete information changes the rebellion decision calculation for prospective rebels; prospective rebels use perception of the regime's capabilities, not actual capabilities, to determine whether or not to rebel. Incorporating aspects from literatures and fields not typically associated with civil conflict, I hypothesize that two mass media dimensions, media freedom and media access, have a significant interactive effect on how prospective rebels perceive the regime's capabilities which influences a state's probability of civil conflict. Using a logistic regression, I empirically examine Media Interaction with established civil conflict literature variables on all states from 1993 to 2004. Over a series of models, predicted probabilities estimations, and a controlled experiment, I determine two novel findings: 1) mass media significantly impacts the likelihood of civil conflict under certain conditions and 2) the state capacity literature's objective assumption misses important civil conflict onset variance.","abstract_html":"State capacity scholars contend that a state's capabilities objectively predict its likelihood of civil conflict onset. The state capacity literature argues that the likelihood of civil conflict increases when military strength, regime revenue, and/or political institution coherence decrease. However, for this theoretical causal linkage to hold, the state capacity literature must assume that prospective rebels possess complete regime capabilities information; whereas, prospective rebels will know to rebel when the regime has a sufficiently weak, low revenue, and/or an incoherent political institution. I begin my dissertation by contending that incomplete information is more indicative of prospective rebels' informational abilities. Next, I consider how incomplete information changes the rebellion decision calculation for prospective rebels; prospective rebels use perception of the regime's capabilities, not actual capabilities, to determine whether or not to rebel. Incorporating aspects from literatures and fields not typically associated with civil conflict, I hypothesize that two mass media dimensions, media freedom and media access, have a significant interactive effect on how prospective rebels perceive the regime's capabilities which influences a state's probability of civil conflict. Using a logistic regression, I empirically examine Media Interaction with established civil conflict literature variables on all states from 1993 to 2004. Over a series of models, predicted probabilities estimations, and a controlled experiment, I determine two novel findings: 1) mass media significantly impacts the likelihood of civil conflict under certain conditions and 2) the state capacity literature's objective assumption misses important civil conflict onset variance.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Dryden, Jacob Walter"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Ph.D. in Political Science","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Political Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Timothy Nordstrom","Mike Henderson","Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2014,"date_issued":"2014-01-01T08:00:00Z","date_published":"2014-01-01T08:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:05:59Z","subjects":["Civil Conflict","Mass Media","Media Effect","Perception","Rebel","State Capacity","International Relations"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/783","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Timothy Nordstrom","Mike Henderson","Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Dryden, Jacob Walter"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2019-06-20T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Political Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D. in Political Science"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Civil Conflict","Mass Media","Media Effect","Perception","Rebel","State Capacity","International Relations"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/783"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["State capacity scholars contend that a state's capabilities objectively predict its likelihood of civil conflict onset. The state capacity literature argues that the likelihood of civil conflict increases when military strength, regime revenue, and/or political institution coherence decrease. However, for this theoretical causal linkage to hold, the state capacity literature must assume that prospective rebels possess complete regime capabilities information; whereas, prospective rebels will know to rebel when the regime has a sufficiently weak, low revenue, and/or an incoherent political institution. I begin my dissertation by contending that incomplete information is more indicative of prospective rebels' informational abilities. Next, I consider how incomplete information changes the rebellion decision calculation for prospective rebels; prospective rebels use perception of the regime's capabilities, not actual capabilities, to determine whether or not to rebel. Incorporating aspects from literatures and fields not typically associated with civil conflict, I hypothesize that two mass media dimensions, media freedom and media access, have a significant interactive effect on how prospective rebels perceive the regime's capabilities which influences a state's probability of civil conflict. Using a logistic regression, I empirically examine Media Interaction with established civil conflict literature variables on all states from 1993 to 2004. Over a series of models, predicted probabilities estimations, and a controlled experiment, I determine two novel findings: 1) mass media significantly impacts the likelihood of civil conflict under certain conditions and 2) the state capacity literature's objective assumption misses important civil conflict onset variance."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["On Mass Media, State Capacity, And Civil Conflict"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Timothy Nordstrom","Mike Henderson","Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez"],"dc:creator":["Dryden, Jacob Walter"],"dc:date.available":["2019-06-20T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["State capacity scholars contend that a state's capabilities objectively predict its likelihood of civil conflict onset. The state capacity literature argues that the likelihood of civil conflict increases when military strength, regime revenue, and/or political institution coherence decrease. However, for this theoretical causal linkage to hold, the state capacity literature must assume that prospective rebels possess complete regime capabilities information; whereas, prospective rebels will know to rebel when the regime has a sufficiently weak, low revenue, and/or an incoherent political institution. I begin my dissertation by contending that incomplete information is more indicative of prospective rebels' informational abilities. Next, I consider how incomplete information changes the rebellion decision calculation for prospective rebels; prospective rebels use perception of the regime's capabilities, not actual capabilities, to determine whether or not to rebel. Incorporating aspects from literatures and fields not typically associated with civil conflict, I hypothesize that two mass media dimensions, media freedom and media access, have a significant interactive effect on how prospective rebels perceive the regime's capabilities which influences a state's probability of civil conflict. Using a logistic regression, I empirically examine Media Interaction with established civil conflict literature variables on all states from 1993 to 2004. Over a series of models, predicted probabilities estimations, and a controlled experiment, I determine two novel findings: 1) mass media significantly impacts the likelihood of civil conflict under certain conditions and 2) the state capacity literature's objective assumption misses important civil conflict onset variance."],"dc:identifier":["https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/783"],"dc:subject":["Civil Conflict","Mass Media","Media Effect","Perception","Rebel","State Capacity","International Relations"],"dc:title":["On Mass Media, State Capacity, And Civil Conflict"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Political Science"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D. in Political Science"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:05:59Z"}