Burma/Myanmar elections
By: V-Dem Staff
Jan 28, 2015
In 2011, the country got a new president, the former military commander Thein Sein, by many considered a reformist. The new government said it would continue on the path of reform and undertake a number of further liberalizations, a central one being a reduction in the censorship the country's media.
The development in the direction towards freer media in recent years is indeed reflected in the V-Dem data, when using the online graphing tool. The V-Dem dataset offers a range of indicators related to the role of the media, four of them included in the graph below. As evident, all four indicators show a rather sharp increase in media freedom, starting in 2009-2010. Burma/Myanmar is one of the 56 countries being updated in the V-Dem data release in March this year, offering an opportunity to explore if this development has continued in the same direction in 2013-2014.
