Factors Influencing Freedom of Media in the CIS Countries

<p align="center"><strong>Annotation</strong></p><p align="center">on</p><p align="center">Master&rsquo;s thesis</p><p align="center">&ldquo;Factors Influencing Freedom of Media in the CIS Countries &rdquo;</p><p align="center">by Evgeny Gushchin, 2nd year master cources, group 744j</p><p align="center">The Department of media communications</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The main purpose of this paper is to uncover key factors (mainly economic) influencing media freedom in the CIS countries. In order to do this the following goals have been set: 1) to define the term &ldquo;media freedom&rdquo; and to describe main characteristics of its development in post-soviet republics; 2) to analyze different approaches of understanding media freedom and its relations with democratic institutes and economy; 3) to define key elements of the media freedom in the CIS counties; 4) to analyze methodologies of evaluating level of media freedom in the world, used by Freedom House, IREX and Reporters without borders; 5) to calculate the correlations between different media freedom indexes of Freedom House, IREX and Reporters without borders; 6) to calculate the correlation between economic performance and the level of media freedom in the CIS countries.</p><p>The empirical base of this paper consists of annual media freedom rating provided by Freedom House, IREX and Reporters without borders and economic data from World Bank Open Data.</p><p>The key method of this paper is statistical analysis, that is used to find out interconnections between economic indicators (volume of GDP, GDP per capita, annual GDP growth, share of FDI inflow in GDP, Doing Business Index, world oil prices) and the level of media freedom, calculated by Freedom House, IREX and Reporters without borders.</p><p>The analysis of the correlations between economic indicators of media freedom level of Freedom House showed that in the CIS countries in 1993-2013 economic development was accompanied by worsening the situation with media freedom. Besides, the study detected high correlation between oil prices and the level of media freedom in most of the CIS countries, including some of the states that are not major oil exporters (Belarus, Armenia). Thus, among key factors influencing media freedom in the CIS countries is the Dutch disease, that has fell upon the most of the region (excluding Moldova, Ukraine and Tajikistan) and economic recovery after the collapse of the Soviet Union that facilitated the increase of the state power, that carried negative impact on the media freedom in the CIS countries.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>By Evgeny Gushchin&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Research advisor:</p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Assistant Professor</p><p style="margin-left:318.6pt;">Elena Sherstoboeva</p>