From News Consumption to Protest: The Mediating Role of Corruption Perceptions

This article examines whether daily news consumption affects protest participation and whether this relationship is mediated by distinct types of corruption perception. While existing research shows that corruption can both mobilize and demobilize political engagement, less is known about how news consumption shapes these effects. Using nationally representative data from Brazil, the study applies a Bayesian mediation framework to estimate direct and indirect effects of news consumption on protest. Two mediators are compared: perceiving corruption as the most serious national problem and viewing it as government inaction. The results show that news consumption is positively associated with protest, but the mediating role of corruption perception varies substantially. The indirect effect through corruption as a national problem represents 30% of the total effect, while mediation through government inaction is only 5%. The findings demonstrate that differences in how citizens perceive and interpret corruption are an important channel through which daily news consumption is associated with social mobilization.