Political Ignorance and the Internet, Replication Data

DOI

We examine the link between Internet usage and political ignorance. In order to do so, we construct a novel index measuring individuals' indifference with respect to political issues, which determines the degree of individual political ignorance. Our descriptive econometric analysis is based on a rich dataset consisting of six surveys of individuals covering the time period 2001 to 2014 and being representative for the German electorate. The empirical results show that in the earlier years of Internet diffusion, there is a negative link between using the Internet and political ignorance. This link changes sign in later years of Internet diffusion. We discuss potential explanations of this observed change in the link such as information overload and the increase in heterogeneity of Internet users.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.15456/jbnst.2022301.1627401848
Metadata Access https://www.da-ra.de/oaip/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:oai.da-ra.de:777604
Provenance
Creator Bertschek, Irene; Müller, David Frank
Publisher ZBW - Leibniz Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
Publication Year 2022
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY); Download
OpenAccess true
Contact ZBW - Leibniz Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Collection
Discipline Economics