Abstract
This exploratory study applied Everett Rogers's diffusion framework to the global phenomenon of countries adopting freedom of information laws. The external influence of geographic proximity and the internal influence of news media were examined over time. The models indicated that a strong environment for news media had a significant influence on legislation adoption in United Nations member states (N = 192). The models also showed that Europe, followed by the Americas, had the greatest influence on diffusion among the regions, with a predicted trajectory indicating 80% of nations adopting the legislation by 2025 in challenging environments.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 431-457 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Journal | Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly |
| Volume | 89 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2012 |
Keywords
- Everett Rogers
- diffusion theory
- freedom of information laws
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
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In: Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 89, No. 3, 09.2012, p. 431-457.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Freedom of information laws and global diffusion
T2 - Testing Rogers's model
AU - Relly, Jeannine E.
N1 - Funding Information: This exploratory study of the global diffusion of freedom of information laws indicates that with the exception of the influence of Europe and, to a lesser extent, the Americas, geographic region had less of an influence on the diffusion of freedom of information laws than did a conducive environment for democratic norms, specifically an environment for strong news media rights. Though it appears the two regions with the greatest proportion of countries with weak environments for journalists—Africa and Asia—are the largest percentage of nations without the legislation or drafts of the law, the model predictions indicate these nations may be nearly in the same proportion as the other adopters at the estimated time of global saturation, 2025. The predicted trajectory of nations adopting freedom of information legislation in the future, along with the existence of dozens of draft laws or lobbies for the legislation, indicate that these laws will be adopted in challenging environments for journalists in a number of countries. Still, the burgeoning area of online social networks has, to an extent, enabled the mobilization of groups that have been silenced in the past. Given these rapidly changing circumstances, how freedom of information legislation will survive in these new environments is one of the great experiments of the new millennium. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1. Elia Armstrong, Integrity, Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration: Recent Trends, Regional and International Developments and Emerging Issues (New York: United Nations, Economic & Social Affairs, August 2005), 3; Colin J. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects: The Cross-National Adoption of Policy Instruments for Bureaucratic Accountability,” Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration 10 (July 1997): 213–33; Adam J. Newmark, “An Integrated Approach to Policy Transfer and Diffusion,” Review of Policy Research 19 (summer 2002): 152–80, 162. 2. David Banisar, Freedom of Information around the World 2006: A Global Survey of Access to Government Information Laws (London: Privacy International, 2006), 19; Ann Florini, “The Battle over Transparency,” in The Right to Know: Transparency for an Open World , ed. Ann Florini (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 1–16, 5; Toby Mendel, Freedom of Information: A Comparative Legal Survey (Paris: UNESCO, 2008); Alasdair Roberts, “Three Patterns in the Diffusion of Transparency Rules: Money, Guns, and Human Rights” (Social Science Research Network paper, March 12, 2003), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1439722 . 3. Banisar, Freedom of Information ; Helen Darbishire and Thomas Carson, Transparency & Silence: A Survey of Access to Information Laws and Practices in 14 Countries , ed. Stephen Humphreys, Sandra Coliver, David Berry, Chuck Sudetic, and Halle Czechowski (New York: Open Society Institute, 2006). The article defines freedom-of-information legislation as the presence of a law that allows the public to request and obtain information from government offices at the national level; Martin Halstuk, “Freedom of Information,” in The International Encyclopedia of Communication , ed. Wolfgang Donsbach (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), http://www.blackwellreference.com.ezproxy1.library.arizona.edu/subscriber/tocnode?id=g9781405131995_chunk_g978140513199511_ss47-1 ; Roumeen Islam, “Does More Transparency Go Along with Better Governance?” Economics & Politics 18 (July 2006): 121–67; Banisar, Freedom of Information , 5. 4. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects”; Per-Olof Busch, Helge Jörgens, and Kerstin Tews, “The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Instruments: The Making of a New International Environmental Regime,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598 (March 2005): 146–67; Newmark, “Integrated Approach”; Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New York: Free Press, 2003). 5. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects”; Show-Ling Jang, Shau-Chi Dai, and Simona Sung, “The Pattern and Externality Effect of Diffusion of Mobile Telecommunications: The Case of the OECD and Taiwan,” Information Economics & Policy 17 (March 2005): 133–48; Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations . 6. Carole A. Estabrooks, Linda Derksen, Connie Winther, John N. Lavis, Shannon D. Scott, Lars Wallin, and Joanne Profetto-McGrath, “The Intellectual Structure and Substance of the Knowledge Utilization Field: A Longitudinal Author Co-citation Analysis, 1945 to 2004,” Implementation Science 3 (November 2008): 49–70. 7. Diane Stone, “Learning Lessons and Transferring Policy across Time, Space and Disciplines,” Politics 19 (February 1999): 51–59, 55. 8. David Dolowitz and David Marsh, “Who Learns What from Whom: A Review of the Policy Transfer Literature,” Political Studies 44 (June 1996): 343–57. 9. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects.” 10. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects”; Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion”; Zachary Elkins and Beth Simmons, “On Waves, Clusters, and Diffusion: A Conceptual Framework,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598 (March 2005): 33–51; Jang, Dai, and Sung, “Pattern and Externality Effect.” 11. Frances S. Berry, “Sizing Up State Policy Innovation Research,” Policy Studies Journal 22 (September 1994): 442–56; Michael Mintrom, “Policy Entrepreneurs and the Diffusion of Innovation,” American Journal of Political Science 41 (July 1997): 738–70; Thomas W. Valente and Rebecca L. Davis, “Accelerating the Diffusion of Innovations Using Opinion Leaders,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 566 (November 1999): 55–67; Newmark, “Integrated Approach,” 161; Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , xviii. 12. Scholars dating back to University of California, Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber have conducted spatial analysis. Purnima Sinha and D. P. Sinha, “Alfred Louis Kroeber: His Contribution to Anthropological Theories,” Anthropos 63–64 (1968–69): 793–807; Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 43. 13. Torsten Hägerstrand, The Propagation of Innovation Waves (London: Royal University of Lund, 1952). 14. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations . 15. Peter Leeson and Andrea Dean, “The Democratic Domino Theory: An Empirical Investigation,” American Journal of Political Science 53 (July 2009): 533–51. 16. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects,” 152; Busch et al., “The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Instruments: The Making of a New International Environmental Regime,” 152; Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations . 17. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects,” 223. 18. Mintrom defines policy entrepreneurs as those who advance policy ideas and policy change through “identifying problems, networking in policy circles, shaping the terms of the policy debates, and building coalitions.” This is done by “seeding” policy ideas, in some cases in multiple systems in other countries or other states/provinces through contacts with political and business elites. Mintrom, “Policy Entrepreneurs,” 739–40; James W. Dearing, “Applying Diffusion of Innovation Theory to Intervention Development,” Research on Social Work Practice 19 (September 2009): 503–18; Michael Mintrom and Sandra Vergari, “Networks and Innovation Diffusion: The Case of State Education Reforms,” The Journal of Politics 60 (February 1998): 126–48. 19. Newmark, “Integrated Approach,” 161, 165. 20. Rogers describes a change agent as an individual influencing “innovation-decisions in a direction deemed desirable” by an employer, the “change agency” (Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 27). Dearing notes that “the change agent’s role is one of advocacy, information, and implementation support,” and most often the activity is within a system. Thus, change agents have distinctly different roles from policy entrepreneurs and communicate with stakeholders at different levels. Dearing, “Applying Diffusion of Innovation Theory,” 514; Sallie Hughes, “From the Inside Out: How Institutional Entrepreneurs Transformed Mexican Journalism,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 8 (summer 2003): 87–117; Newmark, “Integrated Approach,” 163; Stone, “Learning Lessons.” 21. Dolowitz and Marsh, “Who Learns What.” 22. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 26–27; Banisar, Freedom of Information ; Darbishire and Carson, Transparency & Silence ; David E. Kaplan, Empowering Independent Media: U.S. Efforts to Foster Free and Independent News around the World (Washington, DC: National Endowment for Democracy, 2008). 23. Kate Doyle, “Mexico Opens the Files,” The Nation , August 5, 2002, paras. 2–3; Herbert N. Foerstel, Freedom of Information and the Right to Know: The Origins and Applications of the Freedom of Information Act (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999). 24. Barbara Wejnert, “Integrating Models of Diffusion of Innovations,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (August 2002): 300, 297–326. 25. Russell S. Sobel, Nabamita Dutta, and Sanjukta Roy, “Beyond Borders: Is Media Freedom Contagious?” Kyklos 63 (February 2010): 133–43. 26. Yi Mou, David Atkin, and Hanlong Fu, “Predicting Political Discussion in a Censored Virtual Environment,” Political Communication 28 (special issue 2011): 341–56; Wenfang Tang and Shanto Iyengar, “The Emerging Media System in China: Implications for Regime Change,” Political Communication 28 (special edition 2011): 263–67; Carol Soon and Hichang Cho, “Flows of Relations and Communication among Singapore Political Bloggers and Organizations: The Networked Public Sphere Approach,” Journal of Information Technology and Politics 8 (1, 2011): 93–109; Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey, “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics and Dissent Online,” New Media & Society 12 (8, 2010): 1225–43. 27. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 20. 28. Wejnert, “Integrating Models of Diffusion.” 29. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 344. 30. John M. Ackerman and Irma E. Sandoval-Ballesteros, “The Global Explosion of Freedom of Information Laws,” Administrative Law Review 58 (winter 2006): 85–130; Banisar, Freedom of Information ; Stephen Lamble, “Freedom of Information, a Finnish Clergyman’s Gift to Democracy,” Freedom of Information Review 97 (February 2002): 2–8. 31. Colombia is the second exception. The Latin American nation adopted its first law in 1888. However, its more contemporary version was adopted in 1985. Banisar, Freedom of Information . 32. United Nations, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1948), Article 19, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr// . 33. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects”; Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion.” 34. Banisar, Freedom of Information , 11–18; Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion”; Mendel, Freedom of Information , 19–29, 39–48; Asian Development Bank/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Anti Corruption Action Initiative for Asia and the Pacific” (2001), http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/38/24/35021642.pdf ; Commonwealth Secretariat, Model Laws, “Freedom of Information Act,” http://www.thecommonwealth.org/shared_asp_files/uploadedfiles/%7BAC090445-A8AB-490B-8D4B-F110BD2F3AB1%7D_Freedom%20of%20Information.pdf ; Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, “Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents” (2008), https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1377737&Site=CM ; European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, “Directive 2001/18/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 March 2001 on the Deliberate Release into the Environment of Genetically Modified Organisms and Repealing Council Directive 90/220/EEC” (2001), http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2001/l_106/l_10620010417en00010038.pdf ; European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, “Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on Public Access to Environmental Information and Repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC” (2003), http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:041:0026:0032:EN:PDF ; Organization of American States, “Model Inter-American Law on Access to Information” (2010), http://www.oas.org/DIL/CP-CAJP-2840-10_Corr1_eng.pdf ; United Nations, “United Nations Convention Against Corruption” (2003), http://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNCAC/Publications/Convention/08-50026_E.pdf ; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, “Brisbane Declaration—Freedom of Information: The Right to Know” (2010), http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/flagship-project-activities/world-press-freedom-day/previous-celebrations/2010/brisbane-declaration/ . 35. Juliet Gill and Sallie Hughes, “Bureaucratic Compliance with Mexico’s New Access to Information Law,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22 (June 2005): 121–37; Toby Mendel, The Right to Information in Latin America (Quito, Ecuador: UNESCO, 2009); Juliet G. Pinto, “Transparency Policy Initiatives in Latin America: Understanding Policy Outcomes from an Institutional Perspective,” Communication Law & Policy 14 (January 2009): 41–71. 36. Sheila S. Coronel, “Fighting for the Right to Know,” in The Right to Know: Access to Information in Southeast Asia , ed. Sheila S. Coronel (Bangkok: Raintree, 2001), 1–19; Jamie P. Horsley, “Toward an Open China?” in Florini, Right to Know , 54–91; Suzanne J. Piotrowski, Yahong Zhang, Weiwei Lin, and Wenxuan Yu, “Issues for Implementation of the Chinese Open Government Information Regulations,” Public Administration Review 69 (suppl. 1, December 2009): S129–35; Alasdair Roberts, “A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India’s Right to Information Act,” Public Administration Review 60 (November–December 2010): 925–33; Kyu H. Youm, “Access to State-Held Information: The Korean Experience,” in Freedom of Information: An Asian Survey , ed. Venkat Iyer (Singapore: Asian Media Information and Communication Center and the School of Communication Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 2001), 19–53. 37. Colin Darch and Peter G. Underwood, Freedom of Information and the Developing World: The Citizen, the State and Models of Openness (Oxford, UK: Chandos, 2010); Jeannine E. Relly, “Corruption, Secrecy, and Access-to-Information Legislation in Africa: A Cross-National Study of Political Institutions,” in Research in Social Problems and Public Policy , vol. 19, ed. S. L. Maret (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2011), 325-352. 38. Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion”; Henry H. Perritt Jr. and Zachary Rustad, “Freedom of Information Spreads to Europe,” Government Information Quarterly 17 (4th quarter 2000): 403–17. 39. Jeannine E. Relly and David Cuillier, “A Comparison of Political, Cultural, and Economic Indicators of Access to Information in Arab and Non-Arab States,” Government Information Quarterly 27 (4, 2010): 360–70. 40. Darbishire and Carson, Transparency & Silence ; Darch and Underwood, Freedom of Information . 41. Islam, “More Transparency”; Jeannine E. Relly and Meghna Sabharwal, “Perceptions of Transparency of Government Policymaking: A Cross-National Study,” Government Information Quarterly 26 (January 2009): 148–57; Alasdair Roberts, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 42. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 112. 43. Banisar, Freedom of Information ; Roger Vleugels, “Overview of All FOIA Laws” (2010), http://www.scribd.com/doc/63702424/Fringe-Special-Overview-FOIA-Sep-20-2010 . 44. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 12. 45. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations ; Thomas W. Valente, “Diffusion of Innovations and Policy Decision-Making,” Journal of Communication 43 (March 1993): 30–45. 46. Kristin M. Lord, The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). 47. Those that adopted last were titled “laggards.” Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 279–85. 48. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 240. 49. To further understand the context in which nations may be adopting the legislation for descriptive analysis, nations that have not adopted a law are further divided into nations with a draft of the legislation and those without a draft. 50. James W. Dearing and Do Kyun Kim, “Diffusion of Information and Innovation,” in The International Encyclopedia of Communication , vol. 3, ed. Wolfgang Donsbach (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 1299–1304. 51. United Nations, “United Nations Member States” (2006), http://www.un.org/en/members/index.shtml . 52. Vleugels, “Overview of All FOIA Laws.” Vleugels’s list includes the Cook Islands, Kosovo, and Taiwan, which are not UN member states. Banisar’s 2006 original adoption years were used when the original adoption year was not available with Vleugels’s data set. 53. Piotrowski et al., “Issues for Implementation”; Darch and Underwood, Freedom of Information . 54. Banisar, Freedom of Information , 166–68; Vleugels, “Overview of All FOIA Laws,” 2, 6–7. 55. Based on Busch, Jörgens, and Tews’s research, the diffusion model in this study uses the years that Sweden (1949) and Colombia (1985) adopted a contemporary version of the freedom of information law. Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion.” 56. In the category for Americas are North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. 57. Freedom House, Freedom of the Press Methodology (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2009). 58. Freedom House, Freedom of the Press Methodology . 59. Lee B. Becker, Tudor Vlad, and Nancy Nusser, “An Evaluation of Press Indicators,” International Communication Gazette 61 (February 2007): 5–28. 60. The study used news media rights alone because of the high correlations between news media rights and civil liberties ( R = .72) and between political rights and press freedom ( R = .72). 61. Freedom House, Freedom of the Press Methodology , 2. The news media rights ratings were performed by a team of several dozen scholars, regional experts, and analysts who examined international and domestic news media reports, news media and human rights organization reports, and reports from consultants and staff, multilateral organizations, and journalists in the field. Values from 1980 were used for the democratic countries that adopted freedom of information legislation before the year that the values were available. The study used a one-year lag for new media rights in each country for the year before freedom of information legislation was adopted through 2008. The study used 2009 values for news media rights in countries that had not adopted the legislation. 62. Nigel Meade and Towhidul Islam, Forecasting the Diffusion of Innovations: Implications for Time-Series Extrapolation in Principles of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners , ed. J. Scott Armstrong (Norwell, MA: Kluwer, 2001). 63. SPSS Statistics for Windows, v. 19 (Chicago: SPSS Inc., 2010). 64. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 23. 65. Meade and Islam, Forecasting the Diffusion of Innovations ; Thomas W. Valente, Network Models of the Diffusion of Innovations (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995). 66. Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford S. Jones, “Time Is of the Essence: Event History Models in Political Science,” American Journal of Political Science 41 (October 1997): 1414–61. 67. Box-Steffensmeier and Jones, “Time Is of the Essence,” 1432. 68. Unlike other hazard models, the Cox model allows the distribution of the time duration to be unspecified, and the covariates are what parameterize the duration times. Thus, the hazard rate is similar to the criterion variable used in regression. The duration times are parameterized only with respect to the covariates. Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford S. Jones, Event History Modeling: A Guide for Social Scientists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 21. 69. Box-Steffensmeier and Jones, Event History Modeling . 70. Valente, “Diffusion of Innovations.” 71. The analysis used the projection of 80% of the countries in the study adopting freedom of information legislation to calculate the frequencies of innovator and early adopter countries. 72. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations . 73. Jang, Dai, and Sung, “Pattern and Externality Effect.” 74. Jang, Dai, and Sung, “Pattern and Externality Effect”; Catie Snow Bailard, “Mobile Phone Diffusion and Corruption in Africa,” Political Communication 26 (July 2009): 333–53; Mark Tremayne, Amy Schmitz Weiss, and Rosental C. Alves, “From Product to Service: The Diffusion of Dynamic Content in Online Newspapers,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 84 (autumn 2007): 825–39. 75. About 154 countries would have adopted and 38 nations would have been without the legislation. 76. Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion.” 77. Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion,” 161. 78. Darbishire and Carson, Transparency & Silence , 68. 79. Darbishire and Carson, Transparency & Silence , 68. 80. Banisar, Freedom of Information ; Busch, Jörgens, and Tews, “Global Diffusion”; Kaplan, Empowering Independent Media ; Roberts, Blacked Out. 81. Banisar, Freedom of Information . 82. Banisar, Freedom of Information , 19; Darbishire and Carson, Transparency & Silence. 83. Doyle, “Mexico Opens the Files.” 84. Carter Center, “African Regional Conference on the Right of Access to Information” (Atlanta: Carter Center, 2010); Relly, “Corruption, Secrecy, and Access-to-Information Legislation.” The conference was organized by a host of organizations, including regional journalists, the Atlanta-based Carter Center, and the World Bank. 85. Lord, Perils and Promise , 6. 86. Ackerman and Sandoval-Ballesteros, “Global Explosion”; Banisar, Freedom of Information ; Relly and Sabharwal, “Perceptions of Transparency”; Roberts, Blacked Out. 87. Roberts, “Three Patterns.” 88. Banisar, Freedom of Information ; Horsley, “Toward an Open China?”; Andrew Puddephatt, “Right to Information—Practical Guidance Note” (2004), retrieved March 27, 2008, http://www.undp.org/governance/docs/A2I_Guides_RighttoInformation.pdf ; Darbishire and Carson, Transparency & Silence ; Halstuk, “Freedom of Information.” 89. Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2010 , http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy_Index_2010_web.pdf . 90. George Dura, Nations in Transit—Moldova (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2005). 91. Etling et al., “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere,” 1239; Mou, Atkin, and Fu, “Predicting Political Discussion,” 342. 92. Mou, Atkin, and Fu, “Predicting Political Discussion,” 343, 345. 93. Mintrom and Vergari, “Networks and Innovation Diffusion.” 94. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 274. 95. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 343.
PY - 2012/9
Y1 - 2012/9
N2 - This exploratory study applied Everett Rogers's diffusion framework to the global phenomenon of countries adopting freedom of information laws. The external influence of geographic proximity and the internal influence of news media were examined over time. The models indicated that a strong environment for news media had a significant influence on legislation adoption in United Nations member states (N = 192). The models also showed that Europe, followed by the Americas, had the greatest influence on diffusion among the regions, with a predicted trajectory indicating 80% of nations adopting the legislation by 2025 in challenging environments.
AB - This exploratory study applied Everett Rogers's diffusion framework to the global phenomenon of countries adopting freedom of information laws. The external influence of geographic proximity and the internal influence of news media were examined over time. The models indicated that a strong environment for news media had a significant influence on legislation adoption in United Nations member states (N = 192). The models also showed that Europe, followed by the Americas, had the greatest influence on diffusion among the regions, with a predicted trajectory indicating 80% of nations adopting the legislation by 2025 in challenging environments.
KW - Everett Rogers
KW - diffusion theory
KW - freedom of information laws
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DO - 10.1177/1077699012447921
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84870596682
SN - 1077-6990
VL - 89
SP - 431
EP - 457
JO - Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
JF - Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
IS - 3
ER -