Essays on social media and democracy

The three essays of this dissertation apply game-theoretical, experimental and empirical methods to study the role of social media in the democratic process. The first essay develops a theory about the influence of political interest groups on voting behavior through communication on social media platforms. The model framework allows a theory-based discussion of two policy proposals aimed to counteract election manipulation by disinformation: a ban on microtargeting and the implementation of measures that raise source salience. The second essay studies the effects of these policy interventions in a large-scale laboratory experiment. The third essay employs panel data from a representative survey of Dutch households to examine the relationship between news consumption through social media and political polarization in a multi-party system

Big Data and Democracy

Recent technological developments have raised concerns about threats to democracy because of their potential to distort election outcomes: (a) data-driven voter research enabling political microtargeting, and (b) growing news consumption via social me- dia and news aggregators that obfuscate the origin of news items, leading to voters’ unawareness about a news sender’s identity. We provide a theoretical framework in which we can analyze the effects that microtargeting by political interest groups and unawareness have on election outcomes in comparison to “conventional” news report- ing. We show which voter groups suffer from which technological development, (a) or (b). While both microtargeting and unawareness have negative effects on voter welfare, we show that only unawareness can flip an election. Our model framework allows the theory-based discussion of policy proposals, such as to ban microtargeting or to require news platforms to signal the political orientation of a news item’s originator

Essays on social media and democracy

The three essays of this dissertation apply game-theoretical, experimental and empirical methods to study the role of social media in the democratic process. The first essay develops a theory about the influence of political interest groups on voting behavior through communication on social media platforms. The model framework allows a theory-based discussion of two policy proposals aimed to counteract election manipulation by disinformation: a ban on microtargeting and the implementation of measures that raise source salience. The second essay studies the effects of these policy interventions in a large-scale laboratory experiment. The third essay employs panel data from a representative survey of Dutch households to examine the relationship between news consumption through social media and political polarization in a multi-party system

Microtargeting, voters’ unawareness, and democracy

Recent technological developments have raised concerns about threats to democracy because of their potential to distort election outcomes: (a) data-driven voter research enabling political microtargeting, and (b) growing news consumption via social media and news aggregators that obfuscate the origin of news items, leading to voters’ unawareness about a news sender’s identity. We provide a theoretical framework in which we can analyze the effects that microtargeting by political interest groups and unawareness have on election outcomes in comparison to “conventional” news reporting. We show which voter groups suffer from which technological development, (a) or (b). While both microtargeting and unawareness have negative effects on voter welfare, we show that only unawareness can flip an election. Our model framework allows the theory-based discussion of policy proposals, such as to ban microtargeting or to require news platforms to signal the political orientation of a news item’s originator