CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Skrynnyk, Mykola |
|---|---|
| Title | Politics Through the Lens of the Internet: Does the Internet Affect Citizens' Trust in Government? |
| Summary | Political trust is regarded as an important element of legitimacy and democratic rule. Given a significant decline in the levels of trust across the developed world, identifying factors that drive the trend becomes a goal worth to pursue. This thesis investigates whether the rise of the Internet and different ways of using it can be associated with changes in trust in the government. Using a rich source of survey data covering a decade in the United Kingdom and diverse statistical methods, the analysis proceeds from comparing users and non-users to predicting trust in the government in multivariate regression models, coupled with a stepwise method for model selection. The analysis produces a mixed picture. At first, the results fail to uncover any significant impact of the Internet. Then, however, a deeper analysis finds that time spent on the web is repeatedly associated with lower levels of trust. Concurrently, the use of online news sources as well as social networks are estimated to be positively related to trust in the government. This lends some support to Norris’ “vicious circle” theory and suggests that non-hierarchical online structures with a limited “gate-keeping” function are likely to foster trust in the government or at least neutralise a negative impact of traditional media sources. The analysis also reveals a strong convergence between trust in various institutions. Taken together, the findings signal a direction for further research, which should focus on comparing content of online and offline media sources as well as account for a puzzling alignment of different types of trust. On the metalevel, the results are revealing of shortcomings of traditional survey methods for Internet research and call for alternative ways of data collection, which would involve collecting observational data on Internet users. This would serve as a firm basis for a more in-depth analysis of the ways the Internet relates to political trust and social life in general. |
| Supervisor | Toka, Gabor |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/skrynnyk_mykola.pdf |
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