Does social media promote democracy? Some empirical evidence

Arbeitspapier

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 highincome countries. Our lowest point estimates indicate that a one-standard deviation (about 18 percentage point) increase in Facebook penetration is associated with about 8-point (on a scale of 0-100) increase for the world sample and over 11 points improvement for low-income countries.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: AGDI Working Paper ; No. WP/19/031

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
• Subject: Democracy ; Information ; Facebook ; Internet ; Social Media

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Jha, Chandan Kumar ; Kodila-Tedika, Oasis
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): African Governance and Development Institute (AGDI)
• (where): Yaoundé
• (when): 2019

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/205001
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET