ABSTRACT

In this paper we study the effect of the internet and social media on government approval. On the one hand, the internet exposes people to independent information, which makes them possibly more critical of the government. On the other, many countries use the internet for propaganda, which might increase support for the government. We study these effects via the example of Russia. We utilize data from an existing survey: the resulting dataset contains data on 17,824 individual-level observations from 64 regions in Russia, 2010–2019. We find that more intensive internet use and access to social media are associated with a decrease in government approval. Yet, the influence of social media is more nuanced. The Russian-language homegrown network VKontakte increases public approval of the government. To partially account for self-selection bias, we use the propensity score matching method. Our results remain robust and allow us to make causal inferences.

摘要

在本文中，我们研究了互联网和社交媒体对政府审批的影响。一方面，互联网让人们接触到独立的信息，这使得他们可能对政府更加批评。另一方面，许多国家利用互联网进行宣传，这可能会增加对政府的支持。我们以俄罗斯为例研究这些影响。我们利用现有调查的数据：生成的数据集包含 2010 年至 2019 年来自俄罗斯 64 个地区的 17,824 个人级观察数据。我们发现，更频繁地使用互联网和访问社交媒体与政府批准的减少有关。然而，社交媒体的影响更为微妙。俄语本土网络 VKontakte 提高了公众对政府的认可度。为了部分解释自我选择偏差，我们使用倾向得分匹配方法。我们的结果仍然稳健，使我们能够做出因果推论。