Does social media promote democracy? Some empirical evidence

Chandan Jha and Oasis Kodila-Tedika

Journal of Policy Modeling, 2020, vol. 42, issue 2, 271-290

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 an improvement in the democracy index by about 8-point (on a scale of 0–100) for the world sample and over 11 points for the sample of 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)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Related works:
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)
Working Paper: Does Social Media Promote Democracy? Some Empirical Evidence (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:42:y:2020:i:2:p:271-290

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2019.05.010

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