Introduction Political effects of the internet and social media Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Paris School of Economics (EHESS) and CEPR October 2019 Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 1
Introduction ICT revolution in the last two decades (ITU) • Broadband internet spreads in developing and developed countries • Mobile internet (3G and higher) accounts for much this growth Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 2
Introduction ICT revolution in the last two decades • Internet use per 100 residents, globally (1999:5%; 2019: > 50%) (Source: ITU) Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 3
Introduction Social media revolution in the last decade Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 4
Introduction At the same time... (1) On the one hand: • The wave of political protests throughout the world: • starting the the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, but then, spreading to many parts of the world, as different as Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Chile, France (just to name a few) ... (Al Jazeera) Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 5
Introduction At the same time... (2) On the other hand: Political landscape in many democracies undergoes a drastic change with populists gaining political weight—notably, in Europe: (Gardian) • The number of Europeans living in a country with a populist in cabinet has increased 13-fold from 12.5M in 1998 to 170.3M in 2018 Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 6
Introduction Are these trends related? • Many observers have suggested that the internet, in general, and social media, in particular: 1 play a key role in amplifying existing economic, political, and cultural grievances 2 and have their own independent effect on politics • Arab Spring ⇒ Internet was branded the “Liberation Technology” (Diamond and Plattner 2010)—a popular view in the developing world • In contrast, in the developed world, social media is often blamed for the proliferation of false news, for increasing political polarization by means of “echo chambers,” and for the rise of populism (e.g., Tufekci, 2018; Pomerantsev, 2019) Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 7
Introduction Theory: features of the internet & social media These are reasonable hypotheses as ICTs have changed the way we consume and disseminate information and how we connect with others • What is special about internet & social media? 1 Low barriers to entry • give a platform for opposition and whistleblowers to reach out to voters, particularly when traditional media are controlled (+) • make political gatekeeping ineffective, allowing new entrants into politics (+/ − ) • undermine the traditional media model based on long-term reputation and fact checking ( − ) 2 Reliance on user-generated content and 2-way information flows • facilitate coordination during collective action, making it easier to organize protests (+) • allow collecting information about users that potentially could be used for manipulation or surveillance ( − ) Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 8
Introduction Evidence: ICTs do facilitate political protests • Across Africa, even before 3G (1998-2012), mobile network availability led to protests during downturns (Manacorda and Tesei 2019): • Enikolopov et al. 2019: in Russia, idiosyncratic differences in social media penetration were associated with different intensity of protests in 2011 due to a decrease in costs of coordination (Enikolopov et al. 2019) • Internet could even lead to a regime change, but evidence is scarce—Miner (2015) shows it for Malaysia. Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 9
Introduction Alternative approach is to look at government approval • Gullup World Poll asks the same set of questions about confidence in government in a large set of countries throughout the world • These data allow comparisons both across different sets of countries and over time • Guriev, Melnikov and Zhuravskaya (2019) link these data with the information on the availability of 3G mobile networks annually between 2008 and 2017 Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 10
Introduction 3G networks in 2007 Only 4% of the world’s population had mobile internet in 2007. Sample: Countries with 3G (from Collins Bartholomew) and Gullup World Poll data. Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 11
Introduction 3G networks in 2018 69.3% of the world’s population had mobile internet in 2018. Sample: Countries with 3G (from Collins Bartholomew) and Gullup World Poll data. Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 12
Introduction Result 1: The expansion of 3G reduces government approval, but only if internet is not censored Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 13
Introduction Yet, 3G increases internet use in both groups of countries Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 14
Introduction Result 2: When internet is free, the effect is stronger in countries where traditional media is controlled Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 15
Introduction Result 3: 3G internet exposes actual corruption • Furceri et al. (2019) present data on incidents of actual corruption throughout the world • We look at how perceptions of corruption are related to actual corruption incidents and show that perceptions of corruption go up more with corruption incidents in regions with access to 3G (within the same countries) • Confirming that internet exposes corruption and is a source of independent political information Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 16
Introduction Result 4: Populists benefit politically from the internet expansion, at least in Europe 30 countries in 2007-2018: 87 elections, 409 subnational regions. Chapel Hill Expert Survey classification of populists. Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 17
Introduction Evidence from individual countries: the reversal Before social media: • A number of studies: in the first decade of the ICT revolution, Europeans with internet connection were diverted from politics • In Germany, UK, and Italy, broadband was associated with lower electoral turnout with no visible gains for any political party • (e.g., Falck et al 2014; Campante et al. 2018; Gavazza et al 2019) After social media: • In contrast, the situation has changed at around 2008, turnout and populist vote increased with internet • E.g., the electoral performance of Five Star Movement in Italy and AfD in Germany was stronger in localities with access to broadband • (Campante et al. 2018; Schaub and Morisi 2019; consistent with our results for 30 European democracies) • New populist politicians managed to mobilize voters by connecting to them directly through social media Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 18
Introduction Channels? • In part, the effect of internet on populist vote must be explained by the disillusionment with the ruling elites (that we see in the overall fall of government approval with the spread of internet) • It may also have been partly driven by the better ability of anti-establishment politicians to reach out to frustrated voters • So far, this is a conjecture that needs to be tested in future research • To the extent that “populist” is a synonym of irresponsible policy proposals (a definition, which is shared only by a subset of scholars who study populism), misinformation and false promises are a part of populists’ image • There is no systematic study, which shows whether populists use false facts more than non-populists in their political discourse and advertising. It is sure that many populists do use false facts. • So, how misinformation spreads online and whether it is effective could be related to reasons for the populists’ electoral gains Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 19
Introduction False news dissimination There is also no systematic study of whether false news are more or less prevalent today than in the past • Rumors and deliberate propaganda based on false facts circulated widely before the age of internet A number of studies look at the spread of false news on social media: • False news do circulate widely: e.g., during the US 2016 presidential campaign, pro-Trump false stories were shared 30M times and pro-Clinton—8M on Facebook (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017) • False stories diffuse faster, more broadly (larger audience), and deeper (more re-shares) than true stories, particularly political topics (Vosoughi et al. 2018) • Browsing histories of false news consumers are peculiar: Facebook is 4-times as likely to be among the websites visited within 30 seconds before a visit of a false news website than before a visit of a true news website (Guess et al. 2018) • Exposure to false news on social media is concentrated among right-wing and older users (Grinberg et al. 2019) Ekaterina Zhuravskaya Political effects of the internet and social media 20
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