Egalitarian media? Internet access and demand for redistribution in the U.S.

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My goal in the PhD is to study whether access to new media,the Internet, has changed the demand for redistributivepolicies in the United States. The introduction of Internetundeniably has changed the way in which people interact withinformation: from merely passive actors to producers of9 / 13information. Historical evidence shows that expanding votingrights to all citizens changes the beneficiaries of publicpolicies: from the elites to the newly enfranchised voters[Larcinese (2014), Lindert (2004), Husted (1997)]. Althoughthe right to vote is virtually universal in the U.S., the Internetmay act as a form of enfranchisement, forasmuch as it givesvoice to citizens and ideas which were not paid attention bythe traditional media.The first paper in measuring reliably the causal effect of thisnew medium on the U.S. presidential elections was Larcineseet. al. (2017). They found that Internet penetration has astrong positive impact on voter turnout, with a weaker effecton campaign contributions and vote shares to Democrats.Unfortunately, evidence of Internet diffusion on politicalparticipation is mixed [Gavazza et. al. (2018), Falck et. al.(2014), Campante et. al. (2018)]. With regard to preferencestowards redistribution, Alesina et. al. (2004) pointed topotential explanations of demand for redistribution: theshare of poor population, the characteristics of the politicalsystem, culture and attitudes. Experimental evidence on thedemand for redistribution have found that its main driversare self-interest, insurance motives and social concernsrelating to inequality [Durante et. al. (2014)]. In line with this,Alesina et. al. (2005) stressed that preferences over politicalactors may reflect voters' own perceptions on the state ofthe economy and the determinants of inequality. This is themechanism in which I want to focus on.A higher amount of information may educate voters,affecting political accountability and public policy choices[Avis et. al. (2018), Prat et. al. (2013), Snyder et. al. (2010)].Nonetheless, even though the Internet undoubtedly hasincreased the amount of information accessible to individualsat a relatively low monetary cost, it might as well increasedthe cognitive and time cost of processing this huge amountof information. First of all, there is evidence that media actlike agenda setters, i.e. by covering certain topics they affectthe relative importance that consumers give to that topic[Larcinese et. al. (2011), McCombs (2004)]. Closely relatedto this fact is that, as found in Durante et. al. (2018), peoplewho is more exposed to entertainment TV are morevulnerable to populist messages. Conceivably, this evidencewill not only relate to traditional media, since the Internet hasalso increased the number of entertainment opportunities.Hence, the real threat of this new media is that it may act asecho chambers [Garret (2009), Gentzkow (2011)], amplifyingthe effects of agenda setting and vulnerability to populism.In order to measure demand for redistribution I will constructa variable capturing the share of votes that a proredistribution candidate got. To do so I will use two datasets.The first is the one provided by the Atlas of U.S. PresidentialElections, which provides electoral results for the U.S.presidential elections at the county level elections held in theperiod 1912-2016.Political parties differ on many other aspects than just theirleaning towards redistribution. That is why focusing on theshare of voting to the left or right-wing parties would be anoisy proxy for demand for redistribution. In order toovercome this problem, I propose to individually classify eachpolitical candidate based on the intensity of their discoursewith regard to redistribution. The American PresidencyProject gives access to a rich database of election speechesand remarks for each candidate running for election.