Research
Work in progress
Connecting the Unconnected: Facebook Access and Female Political Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa
with Sophie Hatte and Jordan Loper
Abstract
Can social media promote female access to political positions? Internet and social media have facilitated a number of evolutions regarding ideas, perceptions and attitudes towards women and their role in society. This paper focuses on the sub-Saharan African context, where female under-representation is particularly salient in both the political and media spheres, and which experienced a rising penetration of Facebook over the past decade. We build a novel panel dataset at the constituency-election level and exploit variation in the electoral outcomes observed across 8,162 races occurring in the context of 63 parliamentary elections in 17 countries. We leverage the staggered introduction of Facebook's Free Basics -i.e. free access to Facebook through partner mobile operators- across constituencies and time, and document the success of this connectivity shock and its subsequent effect on female political representation. We find that larger accessibility of Facebook fosters the election of female candidates, but only in the medium-run. This effect is driven by female candidates endorsed by established political parties, and running for the first time. Analysis based on survey data shows that a larger demand for female leadership supports the electoral effect. Finally, we explore two transmission channels: (i) transfers of gender norms through exposure to Facebook content produced in more progressive countries, and (ii) greater visibility of female politicians through online campaigns.
Far-Right Ownership in the Printed Press and Public Policy
with Mathieu Couttenier, Sophie Hatte and Stephanos Vlachos
Abstract
Newspapers shape the beliefs and attitudes of citizens, creating room for politicians to extract a large political dividend of controlling the press. By studying the take-over of one of the most important newspapers in Switzerland (the Bazler Zeitung) in 2010 by a prominent figure of the Swiss right-wing populist party (Swiss People’s Party, SVP), we estimate how politically motivated ownership in the media industry affects preferences towards public policy. By collecting the universe of news articles published in German-speaking Switzerland since 2006 by 7 leading daily newspapers, we show that, following the take-over, the editorial-line of the Bazler Zeitung converged towards the platform of the SVP. This convergence is particularly strong in weeks preceding important electoral events. In addition, we document endogenous responses in content production by the Bazler Zeitung’s competitors. Leveraging Switzerland’s referendum system on public policy issues, we measure alignment with political parties on policy preferences at the municipality level for 145 referendums over the 2002-2023 period. We show that the take-over significantly increased turnout and alignment with the SVP in municipalities where the Bazler Zeitung was circulating prior to it.
Printing Progress? Newspapers and Female Emancipation in Pre-Suffrage Britain
with Andrea Tizzani