Social Media and the Behavior of Politicians: Evidence from Facebook in Brazil

Political Effects of the Internet and Social Media

“…Using survey data, Rotesi shows that, in areas with higher Twitter penetration (again instrumented by shocks to the presence of popular sports players on Twitter), people tend to be less interested in politics. He hypothesizes that the positive effect of Twitter on turnout could be a consequence of peer pressure at the time of the elections (consistent with the findings of Bond et al 2012, Jones et al 2017, rather than of users' increased interest in politics. Importantly, the use of this instrument results in an estimation of the local average treatment effect on those voters who create Twitter accounts to follow sports, and it may not reflect the effect of Twitter on voters uninterested in sports.…”

“…Students were much more likely to skip school on a protest day when more than 50% of the members of their networks also did so. Coupled with evidence on the ability of peer pressure on social media to change people's participation in voting (Bond et al 2012), this suggests that the structure of online social networks could have an important effect on participation in political protests through its effect on social pressure. 6 Overall, there is convincing evidence that low entry barriers and the potential for horizontal flows of information make social media a vehicle to facilitate political protests.…”

“…A few papers examine how social media affect turnout and voting outcomes. Bond et al (2012) conducted a field experiment on Facebook, involving 61 million participants, during the 2010 US congressional elections. The experimental treatment consisted of showing a message with information about elections and a button that allowed users to indicate if they had voted.…”

“…The question is whether this change in behavior is beneficial for voters, thus increasing political accountability. Bessone et al (2019) study how legislators respond when their constituencies get access to 3G mobile technology. They show that politicians become more active on Facebook and that voters in connected municipalities use social media to interact with politicians through Facebook likes, shares, and comments.…”