Governance and social media in African countries: An empirical investigation

Abstract

This study assesses linkages between social media and governance dynamics in 49 African countries for the year 2012. The empirical evidence is based on ordinary least squares and quantile regressions. Ten bundled and unbundled governance dynamics are used, notably: (i) political governance (entailing "voice & accountability" and political stability/no violence); (ii) economic governance (involving regulation quality and government effectiveness); (iii) institutional governance (comprising the rule of law and corruption-control) and (iv) general governance (entailing political, economic and institutional governance). Social media is measured with Facebook penetration. The findings show that Facebook penetration is positively associated with governance dynamics and these positive nexuses differ in terms of significance and magnitude of significance throughout the conditional distribution of the governance dynamics.

Governance, CO2 Emissions and Inclusive Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…This criterion is adopted in the retention of composite governance indicators in this study. The approach to bundling governance variables for robustness purposes by means of principal component analysis is consistent with recent literature (Tchamyou, 2017;Asongu & Odhiambo, 2018c).…”

Remittances, the diffusion of information and industrialisation in Africa

“…(iii) There is significant variation in the outcome variable to inform the study that countries with low levels of industrialisation can respond differently to ICT and remittance inflows, compared to their counterparts with higher levels of industrialisation. This justifies the use of an estimation technique that accounts for initial levels of industrialisation such as quantile regressions (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019b).…”

Educational quality, social media and public accountability: a global perspective

“…The relevance of information and communication technology (ICT) in development outcomes is becoming increasingly discussed in the literature (Ali et al, 2020;Chatterjee, 2020;Tchamyou, 2017). One consequence is that the potential penetration might be utilized to deal with conspicuous policy pathologies (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019a). However, in spite of the literature threads on the relevance of ICT in state-building, the facet of social media has been largely neglected (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019a;Jha & Kodila-Tedika, 2020;Neu et al, 2019).…”

“…One consequence is that the potential penetration might be utilized to deal with conspicuous policy pathologies (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019a). However, in spite of the literature threads on the relevance of ICT in state-building, the facet of social media has been largely neglected (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019a;Jha & Kodila-Tedika, 2020;Neu et al, 2019).…”

“…Kodila-Tedika (2021) investigates the impact of Facebook penetration on natural resource management; meanwhile, Jha & Kodila-Tedika (2018)assess whether Facebook penetration drives democracy. Asongu & Odhiambo (2019a) provide the empirical linkages between Facebook usage and the governance dynamics in Africa.…”