Voter mobilisation in the echo chamber: Broadband internet and the rise of populism in Europe
Open accessAbstract
Can the diffusion of broadband internet help explain the recent success of populist parties in Europe? Populists cultivate an anti‐elitist communication style, which, they claim, directly connects them with ordinary people. The internet therefore appears to be the perfect tool for populist leaders. This study shows that this notion holds up to rigorous empirical testing. Drawing on survey data from Italy and Germany, a positive correlation is found between use of the internet as a source of political information and voting for populist parties. By instrumenting internet use with broadband coverage at the municipality level, the study then demonstrates that this relationship is causal. The findings suggest that part of the rise of populism can be attributed to the effect of online tools and communication strategies made possible by the proliferation of broadband access.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Among established democracies, both social media use and overall internet use increased political polarization.
“Among established democracies, both social media use and overall internet use increased political polarization63,70.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [63]
Common causal inference techniques used in the sample include instrumental variable designs, matching approaches, and panel designs.
“Common causal inference techniques that were used in our sample include instrumental variable designs that introduce exogenous variation in the treatment variable59–63, matching approaches to explicitly balance treatment and control groups64–66, and panel designs that account for unobserved confounders with unit and/or time-fixed effects67,68.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [63]
Digital media use in Europe led to increased far-right populist support.
“For instance, digital media use in Europe led to increased far-right populist support63,142”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [63]
A range of articles found heterogeneity in effects for varying levels of political interest, political orientation and different characteristics of online content.
“In summary, a range of articles found heterogeneity in effects for varying levels of political interest67,113, political orientation63,69,70 and different characteristics of online content111.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [63]
Cites
Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion
Angrist, J. D., & Pischke, J.-S. (2009) · doi:10.1515/9781400829828 · Cited by 9,467 · see citing works
The spread of true and false news online
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aap9559 · Cited by 8,847 · cited 1× · see citing works
“This is relevant because manipulative, false content appears to diffuse ‘farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth’ (Vosoughi et al. 2018: 1146).”
Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use
Iyengar, S., & Hahn, K. S. (2009) · Journal of Communication · doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01402.x · Cited by 1,940 · see citing works
Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among Internet news users
Garrett, R. K. (2009) · Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication · doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01440.x · Cited by 1,040 · see citing works
The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism
Algan, Y., Guriev, S., Papaioannou, E., & Passari, E. (2017) · Brookings Papers on Economic Activity · doi:10.1353/eca.2017.0015 · Cited by 693 · see citing works
Quattrociocchi, W., Scala, A., & Sunstein, C. R. (2016) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2795110 · Cited by 389 · see citing works
The Critical Periphery in the Growth of Social Protests
Barberá, P., Wang, N., Bonneau, R., Jost, J. T., Nagler, J., Tucker, J., & González-Bailón, S. (2015) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143611 · Cited by 348 · see citing works
Krouwel, A., Kutiyski, Y., van Prooijen, J.-W., Martinsson, J., & Markstedt, E. (2017) · Journal of Social and Political Psychology · doi:10.5964/jspp.v5i2.745 · Cited by 137 · cited 1× · see citing works
“…shows that belief in conspiracy theories correlates with support for populist parties in Italy (Mancosu et al. 2017) and with extreme left-wing and right-wing ideology in the United States, the Netherlands and Sweden (Castanho Silva et al. 2017; Marwick & Lewis 2017; Krouwel et al. 2017).”
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Political Effects of the Internet and Social Media
Zhuravskaya, E., Petrova, M., & Enikolopov, R. (2020) · Annual Review of Economics · doi:10.1146/annurev-economics-081919-050239 · Cited by 560 · see citing works
A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy
Lorenz-Spreen, P., Oswald, L., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2022) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-022-01460-1 · Cited by 348 · see citing works
3G Internet and Confidence in Government
Guriev, S., Melnikov, N., & Zhuravskaya, E. (2021) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1093/qje/qjaa040 · Cited by 255 · see citing works
Local Journalism under Private Equity Ownership
Ewens, M., Gupta, A., & Howell, S. T. (2021) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3939405 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
- Authors
- SCHAUB, M., & MORISI, D.
- Affiliations
- WZB Berlin Social Science Center (DE)
- Collegio Carlo Alberto (IT)
- Corresponding author
- SCHAUB, MAX
- Venue
- European Journal of Political Research
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2020-02-03
- Volume
- 59
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 752-773
- ISSN
- 0304-4130 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-6765
- OpenAlex
- W2995105173
- Cited by
- 90
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 42.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- European Journal of Political Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Social Science Open Access Repository (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Keywords
- voter mobilization, populism, broadband, populist parties, political information sources, online communication, echo chambers, anti-elitism, internet use, Italy, Germany
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
