Mind the Time: The Implications of High-Speed Internet on Political Behavior

• In Event: Internet Access and Digital Media Influences on Participation

Abstract

The impact that broader media choice, as facilitated by the Internet, has on political behavior is central to the study of political communication. Despite abundant research, two factors have not been sufficiently confronted. First, Internet access and Internet use are endogenous to political engagement. Additionally, past studies have treated access as binary, while quality of access varies tremendously. I confront the issues of endogeneity and binarity and assess whether Internet quality has changed political knowledge and turnout, and whether these effects differ between those with more or less political interest, by exploiting exogenous local variation in internet quality. Two different approaches with two independent datasets indicates that increased internet quality has substantively increased political knowledge but has not affected turnout. I then provide evidence that the increase in political knowledge may be a result of consuming more of all types of information, rather than a trade-off between news and entertainment.

Author

• Yphtach Lelkes, University of Pennsylvania