Wired voters: the effects of internet use on voters’ electoral uncertainty

Sudulich, Maria, Wall, Matthew and Baccini, Leonardo ORCID: 0000-0002-6027-9192 (2015) Wired voters: the effects of internet use on voters’ electoral uncertainty. British Journal of Political Science, 45 (04). pp. 853-881. ISSN 0007-1234

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Abstract

This article examines whether voters’ use of the internet as a source of political news affects the extent to which they are certain of their vote choice in national-level elections. It employs data pertaining to the 2011 general election in Ireland, linking geographical information on broadband coverage with individual-level public opinion data from the 2011 Irish National Election Study. The resultant dataset allows the adoption of a quasi-experimental approach in our examination of the effects of online political newsgathering on voters’ electoral uncertainty. Implementing instrumental variables, the study finds consistent evidence of a causal relationship between the use of the internet as a source of political information and increased levels of political uncertainty among voters, ceteris paribus. These findings are robust to a range of model specifications and alternative operationalizations of dependent and independent variables.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJourna...
Additional Information:	© 2014 Cambridge University Press
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Date Deposited:	12 Jun 2015 09:15
Last Modified:	21 Nov 2024 07:42
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/62304

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