TY - JOUR
T1 - The Effect of Social Media on Elections
T2 - Evidence from The United States
AU - Fujiwara, Thomas
AU - Müller, Karsten
AU - Schwarz, Carlo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of European Economic Association.
PY - 2024/6/1
Y1 - 2024/6/1
N2 - 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 by Southwest festival, a key event in Twitter's rise to popularity. We show that this variation is unrelated to observable county characteristics and electoral outcomes before the launch of Twitter. Our results indicate that Twitter lowered the Republican vote share in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, but had limited effects on Congressional elections and previous presidential elections. Evidence from survey data, primary elections, and text analysis of millions of tweets suggests that Twitter's relatively liberal content may have persuaded voters with moderate views to vote against Donald Trump.
AB - 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 by Southwest festival, a key event in Twitter's rise to popularity. We show that this variation is unrelated to observable county characteristics and electoral outcomes before the launch of Twitter. Our results indicate that Twitter lowered the Republican vote share in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, but had limited effects on Congressional elections and previous presidential elections. Evidence from survey data, primary elections, and text analysis of millions of tweets suggests that Twitter's relatively liberal content may have persuaded voters with moderate views to vote against Donald Trump.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85195806614&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1093/jeea/jvad058
DO - 10.1093/jeea/jvad058
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85195806614
SN - 1542-4766
VL - 22
SP - 1495
EP - 1539
JO - Journal of the European Economic Association
JF - Journal of the European Economic Association
IS - 3
ER -