How do the Internet and social media affect political outcomes? We review empirical
evidence from the recent political economy literature, focusing primarily on work that …

We evaluate the empirical evidence interrogating the question of whether social media
erodes social cohesion. We look at how networks, information exchange, and norms operate …

We synthesize the literature on the recent rise of populism. First, we discuss definitions and
present descriptive evidence on the recent increase in support for populists. Second, we …

We study how social media affects election outcomes in the United States. We use variation
in the number of Twitter users across counties induced by early adopters at the 2007 South …

Can digital information and communication technology foster mass political mobilization?
We use a novel georeferenced data set for the entire African continent between 1998 and …

Recent scholarship has suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) technology and autocratic
regimes may be mutually reinforcing. We test for a mutually reinforcing relationship in the …

We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on
social capital. Guided by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a …

We study the causal effect of social media on ethnic hate crimes and xenophobic attitudes in
Russia using quasi-exogenous variation in social media penetration across cities. Higher …

Nearly five billion people around the world now use social media, and this number
continues to grow. One of the primary goals of social media platforms is to capture and …

Epidemic exposure in an individual's “impressionable years”(ages 18 to 25) has a persistent
negative effect on confidence in political institutions and leaders. This loss of trust is …