No news is good news: The relationship between media attention and strike duration

1
No news is good news The relationship between
media attention and strike duration

• Flynn (2000)
• Industrial Relations

2
Does Media Attention Harm the Collective
Bargaining Process?

• Harm measured in terms of strike duration (length
  of strike in days)
• Media attention measured by
• Articles 1 week prior to strike
• Fame proxied by articles written on
  organization 1 year prior to strike

3
Why Might Media Matter?

• Publicly announced positions may ? commitment to
  stated positions
• Media attention then ? strike length
• Other variables may ? both media attention and
  strike length
• We must control for these factors in order to
  measure pure effect of media attention
• Strike size
• Federal intervention
• Famous union
• The industry affected
• Previous conflict also controlled for

4
DATA and RESULTS

• Data
• From BLS (1990s data)
• Large strikes only (10,000 workers)
• Length of strike (days) is dependent variable
• Media data from Nexis mass-media database
• Results
• Table 4.main results supported
• Results can be interpreted as elasticities
• No other variables really matter
• Limitations, though