Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP18063
Authors: Marco Manacorda; Guido Tabellini; Andrea Tesei
Abstract: We study the political effects of the diffusion of mobile Internet between 2007 and 2017 using administrative data on electoral outcomes and on mobile Internet signal across the 82,094 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 led to an increase in voters’ support for communitarian parties campaigning on nationalism and dislike of strangers and minorities.Our estimates suggest that between one third and one half of the remarkable success of communitarian parties, which roughly doubled their support over the period, can be ascribed to enhanced access to mobile Internet technology.
Keywords: communitarianism; mobile internet
JEL Codes: D72; D91; L86
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| economic deprivation (I32) | impact of mobile internet on support for communitarianism (L96) |
| mobile internet access (L96) | intolerance towards minorities (J15) |
| mobile internet access (L96) | support for EU institutions (F55) |
| mobile internet access (L96) | support for communitarian parties (D79) |
| mobile internet access (L96) | vote share of right-wing communitarian parties (D72) |