The Effect of Internet Access on Political Knowledge

• In Event: The Political Effects of Social Media

Abstract

The digital revolution has spawned information abundance, which affects political knowledge in two fundamental ways: First, it affects measurement. Operationalized as a count of correct political facts stored in declarative memory, the measure may be less useful when people retrieve information from the internet. Second, information abundance raises normative concerns. Political knowledge is key to a well-functioning democracy and reliance on the internet to store information (vs. storing it in memory) may be associated with a decline in knowledge. I address both concerns in this paper. I find that the effect of internet access is heterogeneous. First, not all questions are suitable to googling, and not all individuals are able to locate correct answers online. In fact, novices are less likely to answer difficult questions correctly if they have internet access. Next, I examine the effect of reliance on the internet vs. memory more broadly. I find that frequent internet use to look up information is positively associated with political knowledge, especially among those who do not worry about storing every bit of that information in their memory. I discuss the implications for public opinion research and democratic politics.

Author

• Mona S. Kleinberg, University of Massachusetts, Lowell