A Field Experiment on the Internet's Effect in an African Election: Savvier Citizens, Disaffected Voters, or Both?

Abstract

This study contributes to the research on the Internet's effect on political behavior and organization by examining how the Internet influences the types of evaluations that may motivate individuals to organize politically. This study employs a randomized field experiment to determine whether the Internet influenced individuals' perception of the fairness of the 2010 Tanzanian presidential election. It provides a direct causal test of the Internet's effect on political evaluations, and the findings reveal that the Internet negatively influenced individuals' perception of the fairness of the election and recount. However, the findings also reveal that the impact of the Internet on political life may not always enrich democratic values. In this case, more critical Internet users also became less likely to vote.

What’s the Bandwidth for Democracy? Deconstructing Internet Penetration and Citizen Attitudes About Governance

“…Previous research has shown that individuals' Internet use influences their demand for and satisfaction with democracy (Bailard, 2012a(Bailard, , 2012bLei, 2011;Nisbet & Stoycheff, 2013;Nisbet et al, 2012;Norris, 2011) because the Internet is distinct from the one-way Downloaded by [New York University] at 01:18 21 October 2014 communications of radio, television, and print media that provide information to an audience but are incapable of soliciting immediate feedback. The Internet is lauded as having great democratic potential because it allows for reciprocal flows of communication and encourages the development of "participant" citizens, as conceptualized by Almond and Verba (1963), who are interested in making demands from their governments rather than passive subjects who are acted upon (Howard, 2009;Fleming, 2002;Qi & Shin, 2011).…”

Sport and social media research: A review

“…Similar designs could assess consumer attitudes to posts across multiple platforms and/or different types of posts (e.g., text, video, picture, etc.). Outside of the sport context, field experiments have been used to evaluate how social media usage can impact political attitudes and behaviours (e.g., Bailard, 2012). This approach could be adapted to the sport context to assess how engagement with a sport brand or with sport consumers via social media may influence behaviours such as attendance and merchandise purchase or attitudinal measures such as involvement.…”

The augmented newsbeat: spatial structuring in a Twitterized news ecosystem

“…This focus derives from a sense that political mobilization, public communication as well as professional practices in media work have significantly changed since the emergence of social media (Murthy, 2013). In regards to political mobilization and contrary to the popular notion of 'social media revolutions,' some authors stress social media's demobilizing (Bailard, 2012), authoritarianismenabling potentials (Pearce and Kendzior, 2012) as well as their ambiguity towards activating or appeasing activism (Hassid, 2012). Yet, other scholars demonstrate lower entry barriers to public spheres through social media in times of social change (Lim, 2012;Tufekci and Wilson, 2012).…”