Jordan Loper (CERDI, UCA)

Connecting the Unconnected: Facebook Access and Female Political Representation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Jordan Loper
CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne

Résumé 

Can social media promote female access to political positions? By providing a platform for direct communication between politicians and voters, social media may support the breakthrough of under-represented politicians. This paper focuses on the sub-Saharan African context, where women political under-representation is particularly salient, while the continent experienced a rising penetration of Facebook over the past decade. We (i) build a panel dataset of constituency-election level electoral results from 63 parliamentary elections in 17 countries, and (ii) exploit the within- countries staggered coverage of Facebook’s Free Basics (i.e. free access to Facebook through partner mobile phone operators) across constituencies and time. We find that Facebook’s Free Basics fosters the election of female candidates. This effect is driven by female candidates being supported by big political parties. Finally, we uncover several mechanisms. Using survey data, we highlight a political demand mechanism: we find that social media users have more favorable attitudes towards female politicians. Exploring the universe of candidates’ public Facebook posts, we document a political supply mechanism: content analysis suggests clear gendered differences in online campaigning practices.

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