Does Social Media Promote Democracy? Some Empirical Evidence

Chandan Jha and Oasis Kodila-Tedika

No 19/031, Working Papers from European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS)

Abstract: This study explores the relationship between social media and democracy in a cross- section of over 125 countries around the world. We find the evidence of a strong, positive correlation between Facebook penetration (a proxy for social media) and democracy. We further show that the correlation between social media and democracy is stronger for low-income countries than high-income countries. Our lowest point estimates indicate that a one-standard deviation (about 18 percentage point) increase in Facebook penetration is associated with about 8-point (on a scale of 0–100) increase for the world sample and over 11 points improvement for low-income countries.

Keywords: Democracy; Information; Facebook; Internet; Social Media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2019-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-pay and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Forthcoming: Journal of Policy Modeling

Downloads: (external link)
http://publications.excas.org/RePEc/exs/exs-wpaper ... romote-Democracy.pdf Revised version, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does social media promote democracy? Some empirical evidence (2020)
Working Paper: Does Social Media Promote Democracy? Some Empirical Evidence (2019)
Working Paper: Does Social Media Promote Democracy? Some Empirical Evidence (2019)
Working Paper: Does Social Media Promote Democracy? Some Empirical Evidence (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:exs:wpaper:19/031

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