Baccini Leonardo, Sudulich Laura, Wall Matthew
L eonardo B accini is an assistant professor in political science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Laura Sudulich is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK. Matthew Wall is a lecturer in politics at Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, UK. The authors are grateful to Michael Bechtel, Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner, Kosuke Imai, Yotam Margalit, Jack Shapiro, Francesco Sobbrio, Johannes Urpelainen, and the panel participants at the 2012 EPSA Annual Conference for comments and suggestions. The authors gratefully appreciate the comments of the editors and three anonymous referees. The authors thank Michael Marsh for kindly sharing the 2011 INES survey and Alexander R. Tagawa for research assistance. Leonardo Baccini acknowledges financial support from the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Laura Sudulich acknowledges the support provided by the Max Weber team in 2012-2013. Technical material and robustness checks are reported in an online appendix.
Public Opin Q. 2016 Summer;80(2):411-436. doi: 10.1093/poq/nfv055. Epub 2016 Mar 11.
This paper evaluates the influence of online news consumption on attitudes toward the European Union in a context of protracted economic crisis. Using data from the 2011 Irish National Election Study, we combine location-specific information on broadband availability with respondent geo-location data, which facilitates causal inference about the effects of online news consumption via instrumental variable models. Results show that Irish citizens who source political information online are more prone to blame the EU for the poor state of the economy than those who do not. There is evidence of preference reinforcement among those with negative predispositions toward the EU, but not among pro-EU citizens. We complement this analysis with a study of voting behavior in the European Fiscal Compact Referendum, employing a similar methodological approach. The results from this second survey confirm the anti-EU influence of online news consumption among Irish citizens, although evidence suggests a pro-EU effect among voters who browsed the website of the politically neutral Irish Referendum Commission. Our paper contributes to the literature on public opinion, the EU, and political attitudes in times of crisis.
本文评估了在长期经济危机背景下，在线新闻消费对民众对欧盟态度的影响。利用2011年爱尔兰全国选举研究的数据，我们将特定地点的宽带可用性信息与受访者地理位置数据相结合，这有助于通过工具变量模型对在线新闻消费的影响进行因果推断。结果表明，通过网络获取政治信息的爱尔兰公民比不这样做的公民更容易将经济不景气归咎于欧盟。有证据表明，对欧盟持负面倾向的人存在偏好强化现象，但亲欧盟的公民中则没有。我们采用类似的方法，通过对欧洲财政契约公投中的投票行为进行研究，对这一分析进行补充。第二项调查的结果证实了在线新闻消费对爱尔兰公民的反欧盟影响，不过有证据表明，在浏览政治立场中立的爱尔兰公投委员会网站的选民中存在亲欧盟效应。我们的论文为危机时期关于公众舆论、欧盟和政治态度的文献做出了贡献。
