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
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.
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