Selective accountability : Media Visibility and Parliamentary Behavior

A project led by LIEPP's Evaluation of democracy research group

Project holders

Elisa Mougin (ENS Lyon), Tom Buchot (ENS Lyon) and Charles Louis-Sidois (Vienna University of Economics & Business)

Project description

Data journalism has dramatically changed the media coverage of legislators. The press is increasingly reporting on statistical performance, including legislators' attendance rates, the number of amendments they write, and the number of questions they ask. This data-driven shift in media coverage often stems from independent websites, such as GovTrack.us in the U.S., TheyWorkForYou.com in the U.K., as well as Nosdeputes.fr and Nossenateurs.fr in France, which transform raw parliamentary data into performance indicators readily usable by citizens and journalists. This project studies a compelling case study of two French websites: Nosdeputes.fr, launched in 2009 for members of the lower chamber of Parliament, and Nossenateurs.fr, introduced in 2011 for the upper chamber. These websites provide reliable and identical indicators automatically generated by an independent collective. Furthermore, we leverage the stark contrast in their visibility: while Nosdeputes.fr attracts significant public and media attention, Nossenateurs.fr receives few visitors and is rarely mentioned in the press. 

We document an important effect of the general press coverage of the indicators: legislators increase their performance in response to a high number of articles on the websites. However, somewhat surprisingly, we do not find that this effect is driven by legislators who are individually mentioned in the press. This suggests that performance indicators influence behavior through collective accountability, while individual accountability plays a limited role. Moreover, the direct effect of the websites' launch appears to be minimal, indicating that monitoring tools must be visible to be effective.