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Title: Effect of High Information Environments on Voter Turnout

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2016

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Abstract: Political information becoming cheaper and more readily accessible has been heralded as a boon for democracy. Many have hoped that these changes will lead to higher political knowledge and, in turn, more participation in the political process. However, changes in the information environment have also increased the amount of entertainment options available, reducing the amount of political information actually consumed. Estimating the effect of a changing information environment is difficult due to the bias in individual selfreports of media usage related to over-reporting by those who are better educated and have higher political interest. I circumvent these problems by focusing instead on access to information, using within-county variation in the roll-out of broadband in the early 2000s. This conditionally exogenous variation in broadband indicates that increases in the availability of information has an average negative effect on turnout measured at both the aggregate and individual levels. This average effect hides substantial heterogeneity, where more motivated individuals receive substantially more positive effects from increases in the availability of information.

Url: http://rubenson.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Trussler.pdf

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Authors: Trussler, Marc

Publisher: Vanderbilt University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

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