Mobile Internet and the Rise of Communitarian Politics

Marco Manacorda, Guido Tabellini and Andrea Tesei

No 9955, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We study the political effects of the diffusion of mobile Internet using administrative data on electoral outcomes and on mobile Internet signal between 2007 and 2017 across the 81,506 municipalities of twenty European countries, which we complement with individual survey data on voters’ values and positions. In line with literature in social psychology claiming that social media promote tribalism and make individuals particularly permeable to messages of intolerance that prime the insiders at the expense of the outsiders, we show that this technology made voters more communitarian in their attitudes and that, as a result, this led to an increase in voters’ support for parties campaigning on nationalism and dislike of strangers and minorities.

Keywords: communitarianism; mobile internet (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D91 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict, nep-pay, nep-pol and nep-soc
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Related works:
Working Paper: Mobile Internet and the Rise of Communitarian Politics (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9955

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