What influences media coverage? African countries in major Italian newspapers: 1996-2015

The mass media play a key role on the public and policy agenda, especially for events and issues regarding foreign countries. However, it is not clear the rationale involved in the media coverage. This paper studies the references to African countries in two major Italian newspapers between 1996 and 2015. A panel analysis shows that the macroeconomic conditions and the occurrence of coups d'état do not exert a decisive impact on the mentions of a country, while the countries with the lowest life expectancy are more frequently in the news.