When Facebook Is the Internet: The Role of Social Media in Ethnic Conflict

Tuuli Tähtinen

Economics Working Papers from European University Institute

Abstract: This paper investigates whether social media affects the intensity of ethnic conflict. To distinguish the potential effects of social media from those of the broader internet, I focus on the ongoing Myanmar conflict because in such context internetis mainly accessed via Facebook. To identify the causal effect of social media on conflict, I take advantage of a shock in Facebook availability and use local variation in cell phone coverage as an exogenous determinant of social media use. Results indicate that on average social media availability reduced the occurrence of conflict. The analysis, however, reveals important regional differences suggesting that inflammatory content on social media may escalate conflict in areas where ethnic tensions are particularly high.

Keywords: internet; social media; conflict; propaganda; Myanmar; Rohingya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/70858/ECO_2021_02.pdf main text
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: When Facebook Is the Internet: The Role of Social Media in Ethnic Conflict (2024)
Working Paper: When Facebook Is the Internet: The Role of Social Media in Ethnic Conflict (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2021/01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from European University Institute Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini, 9, 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cécile Brière ().