An Informed Vote? Online Newsgathering and

Voting Behaviour in the Irish Fiscal

Compact Referendum

Maria Laura Sudulich, ULB1

Leonardo Baccini, LSE

An informed citizenry is fundamental to the well-being of

democracy (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). The

information environment is vital to citizens’ capacity to

learn about politics, their ability to link political

preferences to parties and policies. People gather

politically relevant information via the mass media

rather than though direct interaction with elites. The

role of the mass media is therefore particularly

important when considered in relation to opinion

1 Corresponding author: Maria Laura Sudulich <sudulicm@tcd.ie>. Forthis project Leo Baccini gratefully acknowledges financial supportfrom the Department of International Relations at the London Schoolof Economics and Political Science. Maria Laura Sudulich acknowledgesthe support of the Max Weber Programme of the European UniversityInstitute.

formation, political awareness and voting behaviour

regarding the European Union, as citizens usually do not

experience direct contact with European institutions.

Moreover, the widespread low level of knowledge about

European Union (hereafter EU) politics and policies is

notorious and persistent. Over one third of European

citizens are still unable to name any European

institution; the percentage of citizens claiming to know

little or nothing at all about ‘the people who run the

various EU institutions and the leaders of the EU’ is a

striking 73%. A similarly high number of subjects (74%)

report knowing little or nothing at all about ‘The

allocation of roles played by the various institutions

(who does what?)’ (Eurobarometer 77.4). This general lack

of understanding of EU institutions and mechanisms among

members of the European public makes citizens rely

heavily on the mass media when it comes to evaluating the

European Union, and when they are called on to vote on

European matters (Dalton 1985; De Vreese 2003; Sattler

and Urpelainen 2011).

While the impact of radio, television and newspapers has

been extensively debated in relation to electoral

behaviour and attitude formation (Banducci and Karp 2003;

De Vreese 2003; De Vreese et al. 2006; Ladd and Lenz

2009; Schuck and De Vreese 2006; Zaller 1992), the

influence of the Internet on political behaviour remains

under-explored. Particularly little is known about how

online newsgathering may affect political knowledge and

voting behaviour.

A tangible real-word trend indicates that the internet is

rapidly becoming a fundamental source of information

about European matters. Between November 2011 and

December 2012, the percentage of citizens reporting that

they had gathered information on the European Parliament

on the World Wide Web went up by 10% (from 33% to 43%),

while figures for traditional media registered a sharp

decrease (Eurobarometer 78.2). The Internet provides a

potentially unlimited amount of information. It also

offers an array of heterogeneous sources, from credible

news producers to unverifiable information posted by

individuals simply voicing their own opinions. These

fundamental differences with respect to traditional media

are likely to affect the opinions and behaviours of those

who have integrated online news consumption into their

media usage habits.

To date, there has been nearly no empirical evaluation of

how the new media affect citizens’ attitudes and voting

behaviour in relation to the European Union, and so this

paper takes a first step to filling the lacuna.

Specifically, we seek to shed light on how Internet-based

newsgathering affects voting behaviour in the context of

EU referenda by analysing data from an original survey2

commissioned for the May 31st 2012 Fiscal Treaty

referendum in the Republic of Ireland. We first assess

whether online newsgathering in the run-up to the vote

impacts vote choice by disentangling the mechanism that

connects online-based information consumption, knowledge

of relevant political facts and voting behaviour. Further

to this, we seek insights on how different types of

online loci determine patterns of knowledge about the issue

2 We deploy data from an original survey of Irish voters conducted bythe polling company RED C after the vote on the Fiscal Compact on May31st 2012.

at stake and voting decisions. Finally, we explore how

these processes are conditioned by pre-existing attitudes

towards Europe.

We find robust evidence that gathering online news during

the campaign increases self-perceived knowledge about the

Fiscal Treaty. Moreover, our results suggest that at the

aggregate level respondents who browsed the web to gather

information on the referendum were more likely to vote

‘no’ than those who did not, ceteris paribus. Importantly,

increased levels of knowledge about the issue at stake

did not mediate the effects of online newsgathering for

those individuals. When we explore whether prior opinions

on the EU condition the effects of online information

consumption, we unveil some nuances of the process. The

effects of the Internet on the referendum are indeed

conditioned by pre-existing opinions about the EU. Among

those who have little trust in the EU, Internet users are

more likely to vote ‘no’ and this can be attributed to

higher self-perceived knowledge of the Treaty. Those who

tend to trust the EU are not affected by online-based

information in their vote choice, while those who have

ambivalent feelings towards the EU experience such an

effect. Within this group of citizens with somewhat

ambivalent opinions about the EU, voters who browsed the

web to find politically relevant information are more

likely to reject the treaty, compared to those who did

not use the Internet. Interestingly, Internet effects are

not channelled by knowledge of the treaty. Finally, our

results indicate that different online information

sources produce different effects, indicating that

knowing the type of online sources used by voters during

a campaign can offer important insights into how media

effects impact voting behaviour.

The article proceeds as follows: in the next section we

provide an overview of the Fiscal Compact Referendum

context. In the following section we explore the nature

of online-based information consumption and outline our

hypotheses. We then describe our empirical approach and

provide details on the data used. Next, we present and

discuss the results of our empirical analysis. Finally,

we conclude by discussing the implications of the

analytical outputs.

The Irish Fiscal Compact Referendum

A constitutional provision in the Republic of Ireland

requires a popular vote on matters that entail amending

the constitution, as ratification of EU treaties does.

Therefore, the Fiscal Compact Referendum of the 31st of

May 2012 was the ninth EU referendum held in the country.

This was the only popular vote on the adoption of the

fiscal stability mechanism in the entire EU, and the

critical economic condition of the country at the time

made this popular consultation a key thermometer for

evaluating public approval of the EU in times of economic

crisis.

The International Monetary Fund, the European Central

Bank and the EU had agreed a bailout of the Irish

exchequer in November 2010 in an attempt to rescue the

country from its troubled economic and financial

condition. The presence of financial inspectors in Dublin

and the obligatory implementation of austerity measures

produced an intense debate in the country, with

significant Eurosceptic voices emerging. Since its

accession in 1973, Ireland had traditionally been a

somewhat Europhile country, but since the beginning of

the financial crisis the percentage of citizens thinking

that ‘membership of the EU is a good thing’ went down by

10%, from 73% in 2008 to 63% in 2011 (Eurobarometer

75.2). A similar drop in Europhile attitudes is also

evident in our survey. As Figure 1a shows, roughly 50

percent of the respondents trust the EU only “a little”.

This is true both for those who voted ‘no’ and those who

voted ‘yes’, although slightly more for the former than

the latter.

[Figure 1 about here]

The long history of Irish referenda on the EU has proven

that the electorate is quite volatile on these matters,

with the referendum on Nice II (2002) overturning the

results of Nice I (2001) and that on Lisbon II (2009)

those of Lisbon I (2008). This feature makes short-term

forces, such as information effects, key elements for a

fuller understanding of vote choices (Elenbaas et al.

2012), particularly at a time when the EU did not enjoy

widespread support in the country. Previous studies

suggest that the information available and the intensity

of the campaign can play substantial roles in determining

vote choice (Hobolt and Brouard 2011). Hobolt (2005)

presents evidence that when information about referenda

is abundant citizens are better placed to make decisions

in line with their pre-existing attitudes on Europe. On

the other hand, when citizens lack information, or the

information available is too complex, people tend to base

their vote choice on party cues and evaluations of the

national government, leading to less predictable voting

behaviour. The Fiscal Compact referendum offers an ideal

laboratory in which to test the effects of information

during a referendum campaign and to address the role of

issue-specific knowledge. The Fiscal Treaty was a

relatively easy-to-understand two-page document, unlike

the ‘impenetrable’ – as described by Valéry Giscard

d'Estaing3 – Lisbon Treaty or the multidimensional issues

evoked in the 2005 Dutch and French referenda campaigns

on the European Constitution. The issue at stake in the

vote for the Fiscal Treaty was essentially one. Easy-to-

3 The Independent. 30 October 2007 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/valeacutery-giscard-destaing-the-eu-treaty-is-the-same-as-the-constitution-398286.html [last accessed on 01/05/2014].

grasp information online could facilitate the acquisition

of knowledge about it and ultimately enlighten vote

choice. Hobolt (2007) shows that when voters are provided

with relevant information they tend to cast a competent

vote in EU referenda. Simply put, gathering information

on the referendum online should translate into a more

competent vote, assuming that this information is not

merely noise. Our data indicate that Internet users

indeed tend to feel more knowledgeable about the Treaty

than non-Internet users (Figure 2). However, these

descriptive patterns need to be disentangled to a deeper

extent to meaningfully shed some light on the information

effects, particularly when the complexity of the online

environment is factored in.

[Figure 2 about here]

We argue that in such a scenario understanding the

effects of online-based information gives an important

insight into explaining voting behaviour in EU-related

referenda, as a large proportion of European citizens use

the Internet (Eurostat 2010-20114) and a growing number of4 Available at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/

citizens find information on the European Union and its

institutions online. Figure 3 shows that almost 50

percent of our respondents used the Internet as a source

of information about the referendum.

[Figure 3 about here]

Interestingly, respondents who voted ‘no’ used the

Internet more than respondents who voted ‘yes’, although

the difference is not statistically significant.

Moreover, our data unveil an interesting variation among

online sources of information about the referendum. Among

web users, 80 percent visited the website of a newspaper

at least once or twice during the referendum campaign,

while only about 50 percent visited the Referendum

Commission official website. Only 40 percent of web users

relied on blogs and forums as sources of information

about the referendum during the campaign.

In sum, the Fiscal Compact referendum provides us with a

clean setting to assess how information gathered online

influences the probability of voting in favour or against

publication?p_product_code=KS-SF-12-050 [last accessed on 07/06/2013].

a specific issue on the EU. In the next section we

develop our theoretical framework and put forward four

hypotheses.

Online newsgathering, knowledge and voting behaviour

The mass media have crucial effects on politics: they

provide information on the basis of which individuals

form or update the opinions that subsequently structure

their behaviours (Castells 2000). Consequently, past

empirical research has explored whether the media exert

an effect on political knowledge and political attitudes,

and nowadays a relatively large consensus has been

reached on the existence of such effects. From assessing

whether the media affect public knowledge, opinions and,

behaviours, research has moved on to exploring how they

do so. The impact of radio, television and newspapers has

been extensively studied [for an overview see Nabi and

Oliver 2009; for the causality nexus see Barabas and

Jerit 2009; DellaVigna et al. 2011; DellaVigna and Kaplan

2007; Kern and Hainmueller 2009] in multiple contexts.

With regard to studies of media effects on attitudes

towards Europe and voting behaviour in Europe-related

public consultations, both the political science and the

communication literatures have unveiled a number of key

facts about media effects. Exposure of treatment groups

to specific media content has been used to explain

opinions on the EU generally (De Vreese and Boomgaarden

2003; Semetko, Van der Brug, and Valkenburg 2003),

support for EU enlargement (Schuck and De Vreese 2006),

and support for the accession of specific countries

(Maier and Rittberger 2008). Media-based information has

been consistently shown to exercise an identifiable

effect on citizens' evaluations of EU affairs, with

intense media coverage being linked to increases in

citizens' levels of knowledge about the EU (De Vreese and

Boomgaarden 2006; Semetko, Van der Brug, and Valkenburg

2003). In terms of electoral politics, Banducci and

Semetko (2004) conclude that individuals are more likely

to turn out to vote in EP elections in media environments

where the election campaign is featured prominently.

Specifically in relation to voting behaviour in EU

referenda, Hobolt finds that “the type and amount of

information that people have affect the way in which they

decide” (2007; 170). In sum, these studies indicate that

traditional media exert a significant effect on citizens’

perceptions, opinions and behaviours in relation to EU

matters.

In exploring the effects of online news consumption on

vote choices and their relationship to political

knowledge, however, we need to use a theoretical

framework that substantially differs from what applies to

assessing traditional media effects. If we are to explore

the effects of online newsgathering we need to consider

the particular nature of online information consumption.

First, the Internet represents a unique case in its

capacity to offer limitless easily reachable information

to anyone with access to it. Compared to traditional

media, it exponentially multiplies the opportunities to

gather information on any issue an individual may be

interested in. When reading a newspaper an individual is

confined to what is contained between its first and last

pages; on the Internet such boundaries simply do not

exist. Users can navigate away from an initial page and

visit sites they did not actively search for by means of

hyperlinks, and come across amounts of information that

are just not available via other media. Secondly, the

content of webpages that users come across is radically

different from what can be read in a newspaper or shown

on TV. While media publishers and regulatory authorities

act as gatekeepers on what can be broadcast and printed,

the Internet remains largely unregulated. In other words,

quality control of the information that goes up on the

WWW can only be partially guaranteed. Moreover, user-

created content is prominent, not only on specific

platforms like social networking sites, but also on the

websites of established media outlets. As such, online-

based newsgathering can entail being exposed to opinions

and statements that are unverified and possibly

confounding, as well as to factual information. Possibly,

in a single browsing session individuals encounter a

combination of both. Hence, online newsgathering holds

strong potential for the amplification of noise.

The literature exploring traditional media effects on

political behaviour often assumes that citizens use media

information to enlighten their preferences by acquiring

new knowledge. Information, in Hobolt’s words, is “the

data that allow people to acquire knowledge and act

competently” (2007, 154). Simply put, information

provided by the media helps citizens redefine their ‘fund

of knowledge’ (Bartels 1993) by clarifying the elements

that will guide their voting decisions. The implicit

assumption here is that the information provided by the

mass media is both relevant and factual. This is rarely

spelled out in the literature as this assumption is

relatively safe in relation to traditional media.

However, this is not necessarily the case when it comes

to the Internet. Alongside the process of clarifying

citizens’ opinions by providing them with relevant facts,

the internet also delivers conflicting information and

stimuli. The amount and type of information available

online differ substantially from what is available via

other media, firstly in terms of heterogeneity of

content, secondly with regard to types of sources, and

thirdly in relation to the amount of noise associated

with online-based information. These features of the

online environment make the role of Internet-based

newsgathering complex to predict, yet important to

evaluate. The assumption that information leads

individuals to better awareness in their attitudes and

positions needs to be adjusted according to the type of

information and, above all, needs empirical

corroboration. Hence, we empirically explore the extent to which

online information affects electoral behaviour and whether this process is

mediated by increased levels of knowledge of the issue at stake in our

first working hypothesis:

H1: those who browsed the internet for political newsgathering in the

run-up to the vote display a significantly different voting behaviour to

those who did not, and this process happens by means of increased

levels of self-perceived knowledge about the Fiscal Treaty.

Further to this, we explore whether the effects of online

information consumption are conditioned by citizens’

general attitudes towards Europe. If newly gathered

information is used to update/revise citizens’ pre-

existing beliefs, we need to account for those beliefs

and explore the extent to which they affect the

translation of online-based information into voting

behaviour and whether this is mediated by better

knowledge of the issue at stake. Particularly in relation

to vote choices in EU referenda in the Republic of

Ireland, previous studies have found that voters’

opinions on the EU have played a major role in guiding

voting decisions (Garry 2013; Garry, Marsh, and Sinnott

2005). The literature on EU referenda offers three types

of explanations of the significant determinants of vote

choice. The first school, either defined as the ‘issue

voting’ or ‘attitude’ school, contends that people’s

underlying attitudes towards the European Union exert the

greatest explanatory power in understanding EU referenda

(Franklin 2002; Franklin, Van der Eijk, and Marsh 1995).

The second school, often refereed to as the ‘Second-Order

Elections” school (Marsh 1998; Reif and Schmitt 1980),

argues that EU referenda are no different from European

Parliament elections to the extent that in both cases

what drives people’s considerations are their evaluations

of the national government. A third school, labelled the

‘utilitarian’ school, indicates utilitarian

considerations about the effects of policies on European

integration as the key determinant of support for EU-

level policy interventions (Gabel 1998). This approach

postulates that voters make judgments on the consequences

of the ratification of the treaty in question according

to what would most benefit their well-being. These three

sets of explanations are not mutually exclusive; on the

contrary, they coexist and concur in explaining voting

behaviour. Garry Marsh and Sinnott (2005) find that long-

term attitudes towards Europe have a stronger predictive

power than second-order considerations in the case of the

two Nice Treaty referenda in Ireland. Garry (2013), in

his analysis of the Irish referenda on Lisbon (I and II),

finds that first-order elements outweigh second-order

considerations in determining the outcomes of the

referenda. We therefore focus on the attitude school –

while controlling for the other two sets of explanations

– in exploring the effects of online newsgathering, under

the premise that the information available online

operates as an addition to pre-existing attitudes towards

the EU. Our second working hypothesis is as follows:

H2: The effects of online newsgathering and the process by which

online news consumption affects voting behaviour is conditioned by

prior opinions on the EU.

Finally, we explore whether different online loci exert

different effects on users in relation to both voting

behaviour and awareness of the issue at stake. By

selecting two different types of websites we intend to

gain a more fine-grained understanding of how the new

media affect individuals’ behaviours. Online spaces vary

in the heterogeneity of their content, in the extent to

which they host unverified facts and in the amount of

space they give to comments, opinions and more in general

to content that has not undergone a thorough fact-

checking process. For instance, the website of a major

newspaper is likely to offer content that is verified and

has been provided by reliable accredited sources. At the

other end of the spectrum, platforms like blogs and

forums are, by definition, aggregators of comments and

opinions. Therefore, we expect the effects of information

encountered on these websites to be different from the

effects of information encountered on ‘more reliable’ and

impartial websites. In particular, we would expect

information encountered on the latter to affect voting

behaviour via an increased amount of knowledge. We test

the possibility of differential effects in our third

working hypothesis:

H3: Different online loci exert differential effects on public choice in

the context of EU referenda. Websites promoting reliable fact-checked

information affect vote choice by enhancing levels of knowledge of the

issue at stake.

And we additionally explore whether this is conditioned

by pre-existing opinions:

H4: The effects of different websites and the process by which online

news consumption affects voting behaviour is conditioned by prior

opinions on the EU.

We test H3 and H4 by making use of the detailed

information on citizens’ new media consumption in the

run-up to the vote gathered through the survey.

Specifically, we have at our disposal information on

whether and how often respondents browsed the Internet in

general to gather information on the referendum, whether

and how often they visited the website of the Referendum

Commission, blogs and forums, the online version of a

national newspaper, and social networking sites. To

perform our test on the differential effects of different

online sources we substitute the Internet at large with

the Referendum Commission website in the first instance,

and then with blogs and forums, as the former represents

a fact-checked impartial informative platform and the

latter embed the essence of opinion aggregators with no

guarantee of correctness, impartiality or lack of bias.

The Referendum Commission dedicated a website to the

Fiscal Stability Treaty 5(www.http://www.refcom.ie/)

featuring a youtube video inviting citizens to vote,

providing links to additional audio-visual material with

extensive information on the Fiscal Stability pact, and a

link to the guide designed by the Referendum Commission

itself to provide factual and balanced information to

voters. The Fiscal Stability Treaty website offered

5 Now: http://www.refcom.ie/en/Past-Referendums/Fiscal-Stability-Treaty/

relevant facts and guidance on the referendum procedures.

Its main objective was to provide citizens with unbiased

factual elements on which to base their voting decisions.

We therefore consider this website a source of relevant

factual information on the issue.

Even by tracing the content that appeared on popular

blogs and forums in the run-up to the referendum, we

could not establish specifically to which particular

posts respondents were exposed. However, we know that

forums and blogs host opinions that have not undergone a

fact-checking process. These online environments possibly

contain highly biased information and echo voices that

the mainstream media do not adequately report (Nie et al.

2010). For the purpose of exploring the effects of

different online platforms, we expect blogs and forums to

produce different effects from those determined by

exposure to the Referendum Commission website, as the

nature of these information environments is radically

different.

Empirical strategy

As a result of our theoretical framework, we are

interested in estimating three mechanisms: (1) the effect

of Internet on knowledge about the Fiscal Compact; (2)

the impact of online-based newsgathering on voting

behaviour; (3) the effect of knowledge about the treaty

on voting behaviour. To do this, we implement a causal

mediation analysis, which accommodates these three goals

simultaneously. In particular, the causal mediation

analysis allows exploration of the role of an

intermediate variable that lies along the causal paths

between the treatment and the dependent variable (Hicks

and Tingley 2011; Imai, Keele, and Yamamoto 2010). In our

case, knowledge about the Fiscal Treaty is the mediator

that lies along the causal path between information

gathered online and voting behaviour in the Irish Fiscal

Compact referendum. The path mode is illustrated in

Figure 4.6

[Figure 4 about here]

6 The literature on causal mediation analysis is large and fast-growing. For pioneering statistical studies, see Baron and Kenny(1986) and Robins and Greenland (1992).

To carry out the causal mediation analysis, we rely on

the STATA 13 ‘mediation’ package developed by Hicks and

Tingley (2011). The model for the mediator variable is an

OLS regression, whereas the model for the outcome

variable is a logistic regression. We use robust standard

errors and we run (up to) 700 simulations for the quasi-

Bayesian approximation of parameter uncertainty.

To balance out differences between those who used the

internet for political newsgathering and those who did

not, we use entropy balancing (Hainmueller 2012).7

Specifically, we balance our entire set of covariates

with respect to the treatment Internet, which captures

those respondents who go online.8 Differences in the means

between the treated and control group vanish for all the

covariates after implementing entropy balancing (pre- and

post-matching descriptive statistics for the relevant

variables are reported in the Appendix). We note that

balancing covariates with respect to the treatment is

similar to controlling for such confounding factors in a

standard multivariate regression without imposing

7 We use the STATA 13 package ‘ebalance’ (Hainmueller, 2013).8 The description of the covariates is provided in the followingsection.

parametric functional form or distributional assumptions.

Finally, we run all our parametric models using the

weights obtained from the entropy balance estimation as

well as the entire set of control variables to account

for any residual differences between the treated and

control groups.9 An advantage of entropy balancing over a

matching technique is that the former technique does not

drop unmatched observations (Hainmueller 2012: 2). This

is a particularly welcome feature in our case since our

sample is quite limited.

Data

We use data from an original survey of Irish voters

conducted by the polling company RED C after the vote on

the Fiscal Compact on May 31st 2012. A representative

sample of 1,000 Irish voters was interviewed immediately

after the vote and asked a battery of questions about

their voting behaviour and their attitudes towards

national and international actors. Moreover, respondents

were asked about patterns of online newsgathering in the

run-up to the vote. Below, we describe the outcome9 Residual differences might come from the variance and skewness ofthe covariates.

variable, the treatment, the mediator, and the control

variables. We report verbatim the key questions used and

descriptive statistics in the Appendix.

Outcome variable

The dependent variable is a dummy that scores one if

respondents vote ‘yes’ to the EU Fiscal Compact treaty.

The question on the vote was put very straightforwardly

as follows: “Did you vote YES in favour or NO against in

the Fiscal Stability Treaty referendum?”. We drop those

respondents who refused to answer this question. As a

result, we are left with 948 observations.

Treatment

Our treatment scores one if a respondent used the

internet for information about the referendum during the campaign.

This dummy captures those respondents who went online

‘once or twice’ as well as those who went online

‘regularly’. We label this variable Internet. Our results

are similar if we only consider those respondents who

went online regularly.10 In addition, we include two

dummies to control for the effects of particular types of

platforms (H3 and H4). The first scores one if a

respondent used the official Referendum Commission Fiscal

Stability Treaty website regularly during the campaign,

the second scores one if a respondent regularly visited

blogs and forums in the run-up to the vote.

Mediator

Our mediator is based on respondents’ self-assessed

knowledge about the treaty based on the following survey

question: “How would you describe your knowledge of the

Fiscal Treaty?” (I) I don’t know anything about it at

all, (II) I don’t know very much about it, (III) I know

quite a lot about it, (IV) I’m extremely well informed

about it. The resulting categorical variable ranges

between zero and three. The median value of this variable

is two, i.e. ‘I know quite a lot about it’. We label this

variable Knowledge of the Treaty. In the model for the mediator

we are unable to run an ordered logit (or probit), which

is not supported by the ‘mediation’ package, although10 Results are available upon request.

Knowledge of the Treaty is an ordinal variable. However, if we

run a simple ordered probit and a simple OLS regression

with Knowledge of the Treaty as outcome variable, the results

are very similar in the two estimations.11 This makes us

confident of the reliability of the estimation even when

we implement the causal mediation analysis.

Control Variables

The key control variable is an ordinal variable that

captures respondents’ attitudes towards the EU.

Specifically, the variable Trust in the EU scores zero if

respondents do not trust the EU at all, scores one if

respondents trust the EU a little, and scores two if

respondents trust the EU a lot. In a causal mediation

analysis framework we are unable to include in the same

model the interaction term between the treatment and Trust

in the EU and the interaction between the mediator and Trust

in the EU. This would imply having two mediators (i.e.

Knowledge of the Treaty and its interaction) and two

treatments (i.e. Internet and its interaction). Including

the interaction terms of the mediator and treatment would

11 Results are available upon request.

make it very difficult to interpret the results. In

addition, the ‘mediation package’ in STATA supports only

one mediator and one treatment. Therefore to test H2 and

H4 we implement a split sample analysis in which we run

our main model for the three different values of the

variable Trust in the EU.

We also include several control variables to account for

confounding factors and to avoid overestimating the

effect of our main covariates. In order to account for

second order determinants of vote choice, we include a

question on how satisfied respondents are with the

coalition government (Fine Gael and Labour Party) in

place at the time and a measure of how much citizens

trust the government. We label the former variable

Satisfaction with Government and the latter one Trust in

Government. For both variables, high values imply high

satisfaction with the Fine Gael and Labour Party

coalition. To include the ‘utilitarian calculus’ we use a

question that asked respondents whether they agreed that

approving the Fiscal Compact mechanism would avoid

complete bankruptcy for Ireland. We label this variable

Bankruptcy. High values for this variable imply that

respondents strongly agree with the statement that the

Fiscal Compact helps avoid complete bankruptcy in

Ireland. Finally, we control for variables capturing the

socio-economic characteristics of the respondents: age,

social class,12 working status,13 and whether respondents

live in urban or rural areas. Such characteristics can

affect the probability of going online, knowledge about

the treaty, and trust in institutions. By controlling for

these variables we avoid overestimating the impact of the

treatment and the mediator.

Empirical Results

In Table 1 we present the results of the causal mediation

analysis for the entire sample (Model 1), and then

separately by splitting the sample on the basis of priors

on the European Union.14 Therefore, Model 2 reports the

estimates for those who trust the EU ‘A lot’ (35% of the

12 Coded as the standard NRS classification.13 The categories are: Working full time, Part time, Unemployed, Student, Housewife, Retired. 14 We do not show the average causal mediation effect (ACME) as afunction of degree of violation of the sequential ignorabilityassumption since the ACME is never statistically significant.

sample); Model 3 shows results for those who only trust

the EU ‘A little’ (51% of the sample); and Model 4 for

those who ‘Do not trust the EU at all’ (14% of the

sample).

[Table 1 about here]

There are three take-away messages from the results in

Table 1. First, online newsgathering always increases

self-perceived knowledge about the Fiscal Compact treaty.

Indeed, our treatment is positive and statistically

significant in all the models, indicating that browsing

the web for information on the treaty actually leads to

higher levels of self-perceived knowledge about the issue

at stake. While we cannot completely rule out the

possibility of self-section (i.e. people going online

because they already know about the treaty), it is

interesting that the positive and statistically

significant effect of Internet on Knowledge of the Treaty

holds in every sub-sample, which are made up of very

different political types, e.g. Europhiles versus

Eurosceptics. In the Appendix, we show that gathering

online news does not affect general knowledge about the

EU (e.g. web users are not more likely to know that

Switzerland is not an EU member). This result mitigates

the concern that the positive impact of Internet on

Knowledge of the Treaty is a mere function of web users

being more interested in politics than non-web users. In

turn, the aforementioned issue of self-selection does not

appear to be driving our findings.

Second, the overall effect of online newsgathering

indicates that browsing online for relevant news on the

referendum leads to a higher likelihood of voting ‘no’.

Compared to respondents who never went online during the

referendum campaign, those who did are more likely to

reject the treaty. Therefore, our findings identify a

significant effect of the new media on voting behaviour.

The probability of voting ‘yes’ decreases by 5 percent

for web users in aggregate terms. Interestingly, the

negative effect of internet on the ‘yes’ vote is

statistically significant only in Model 3, i.e. for these

respondents who trust the EU a little. The probability of

voting ‘yes’ also decreases by 5 percent for respondents

who went online during the referendum campaign and trust

the EU only a little. Assuming that such respondents are

the most open to the persuasion of campaign activity and

media messages, this result unveils an important effect

of the new media on voting behaviour. 15

Third, the effect is not mediated by better self-

perceived understanding of the issue at stake. The

Average Causal Mediation Effect (ACME) is never

statistically significant, whereas the average direct

effect is negative and statistically significant only in

Model 4. This seems to suggest that Internet users came

across persuasive arguments and information supporting

the ‘no’ side during the campaign. After accounting for

such a direct effect, the mediating effect of an increase

in self-perceived knowledge about the treaty gathered

online has a trivial effect on vote choice.

In sum, H1 and H2 are only partially confirmed. Regarding

H1, those respondents who went online regularly during the

campaign show a different voting behaviour to those

respondents who never used the internet. However,

15 The results are not driven by the size of the sample. In otherwords, if we take a random sub-sample of Model 2 and Model 3 with thesame number of observations as Model 4, we obtain similar results,which are available upon request.

Internet effects on political behaviour do not happen

through the Knowledge of the Treaty channel. Regarding H2,

the negative effect of Internet on the ‘yes’ vote holds

regardless of the level of trust in the EU, although it

is statistically significant only for hesitant supporters

of the EU, indicating that the effects of online-based

information may be different for different groups of

individuals.

In testing H3 and H4, we explore whether different online

loci produce different effects (see Tables 2 and 3). With

regard to the website of the Referendum Commission, Model

5 provides results for the overall sample, whereas Models

6 and 7 report the results of the split-sample analysis –

shown in Table 2. Regarding blogs and forums – reported

in Table 3 – Model 8 shows the results for the whole

sample, whereas Models 9, 10, and 11 present the findings

for the split-sample analysis.

[Table 2 about here]

From Table 2, it clearly emerges that visiting the

Referendum Commission website increases self-perceived

knowledge about the treaty. This finding confirms what

was previously seen when using Internet as the treatment

variable. Importantly, Model 5 shows that those who

regularly visited the website of the Referendum

Commission are more likely to vote ‘yes’ than those who

did not visit this website, ceteris paribus. Therefore online

information gathering on this fact-checked website leads

to a higher likelihood of accepting the Fiscal Compact.

This is a crucial finding, as it indicates that the type

of website under scrutiny impacts on people’s choices,

confirming the contention stated in H3. While in aggregate

terms online newsgathering indicates that the WWW as such

increases the likelihood of rejecting the treaty, when we

explore the effects of an impartial source of web-based

information we find that the effects go in the opposite

direction. Importantly, the positive effect of visiting

the Commission website on the ‘yes’ vote is driven by

those respondents who trust the EU only “a little” and

not by Europhiles. This is a key finding, since concerns

about self-selection into the treatment are weaker for

this sub-sample of respondents, who are hesitant EU

supporters. On the contrary, Model 6 indicates that there

are no significant differences between those who visited

the Referendum Commission website and those who did not

when we restrict the analysis to Europhile citizens.

Simply put, the Europhiles tend to vote ‘yes’ regardless

of information gathered on the Commission website. We do

not have enough variation in the group of Eurosceptic

individuals to estimate the effects of browsing the

Commission website on the vote. Therefore, the regression

on the Eurosceptic sub-sample is dropped.16 Finally, the

marginal effect of the treatment is substantive: those

respondents who visited the Commission website regularly

are 9 percent more likely to vote ‘yes’. Also in this

case, the ACME is never statistically significant. Thus,

visiting a fact-checked website does not impact voting

behaviour through a higher level of self-perceived

knowledge about the treaty.

[Table 3 about here]

16 In our sample, only five respondents who do not trust the EU atall visited the Referendum Commission official website regularlyduring the campaign. We acknowledge that such a low number hints atthe possibility of selection into the treatment for the Euroscepticsub-sample.

With regard to blogs and forums, we observe no overall

significant difference in voting behaviour between those

who regularly visit these platforms and those who do not

(Model 8). Interestingly, websites that contain opinions

do not increase self-perceived knowledge about the treaty

in a statistically significant way. This finding

reinforces our supposition that blogs and forums increase

the level of noise. In other words, websites containing

opinions and debates do not raise voters’ knowledge on

the specific issue at stake, but blend together

information, which is only vaguely related to the topic

of the referendum.

Only when we explore the effects conditional on attitudes

towards Europe do we find that significant differences

exist among web-user and non-user Europhile individuals

(Model 9) and among users and non-users in the

Eurosceptic group (Model 11). Those who regularly visit

blogs and forums are significantly more likely to vote

‘no’ than those who do not, for both Eurosceptic and

Europhile respondents, although the magnitude of the

effect is substantially larger for the former group. It

is also important to note that this tendency is not due

to self-reported better understanding of the treaty

(Model 9), suggesting that opinion aggregators may

amplify noise rather than relevant information on the

issue at stake. Among those who hold Eurosceptic views

(Model 11) the effect appears to operate via increased

self-perceived knowledge about the treaty. This is the

only estimation in which the ACME is statistically

significant, although concerns about violation of the

sequential ignorability assumption are severe (see Figure

A1 in the Appendix).17

The marginal effect is large: for these who visit blogs

and forums and do not trust the EU at all, the

probability of voting ‘yes’ decreases by 23 percent.

Finally, there is no significant difference between those

who regularly visit blogs and forums and those who do not

among citizens who are somewhat neutral in their

evaluation of the EU. To conclude, we note that the

control variables are usually not statistically17 The results show that for the point estimate of the ACME to bezero, the correlation between the error term of the model for themediator and the error term of the model of the outcome must beapproximately -0.4.

significant. This is in line with our expectations, since

we balanced all the covariates with respect to the

treatment. Those control variables that are statistically

significant have the expected sign, adding plausibility

to our analysis.

Conclusions

We have extended the discussion of media effects by

assessing the online information environment and its

impact on vote choice. Further to this, we have explored

whether online information affects voting via the path of

knowledge, and if the process is conditioned by pre-

existing behaviours. Our findings lead to the conclusion

that online-based newsgathering significantly affects

voting choices by increasing the probability of voting

‘no’ among those who searched for information on the

internet in the run-up to the vote. Interestingly,

although browsing the web for relevant information

increases self-perceived knowledge about the treaty, the

effect of online newsgathering is not mediated by better

understanding of the issue at stake. Information effects

impact voting choices without necessarily providing

voters with more clarity. Sudulich et al. (2014) found

that online newsgathering leads to higher levels of voter

uncertainty, leaving unresolved, however, whether this is

due to greater confusion or increased knowledge about the

available options during an electoral campaign. Our

findings here would support the former explanation: the

internet is a container of a large amount of

heterogeneous information of various natures resulting in

a mixture of useful knowledge and noise. The results of

our study suggest that noise may actually prevail.

Our findings on the overall effect of online-based

newsgathering are, however, better understood in

combination with what the analysis for specific online loci

shows. Different platforms affect vote choice in

different and somewhat conflicting ways and estimating

the effects of the medium may lead to conclusions

differing from what is found when estimating the effects

of particular types of websites. While browsing the

internet as such leads to a higher likelihood of

rejecting the treaty in aggregate terms, visiting the

website of a fact-checked unbiased platform such as the

Referendum Commission website produces the opposite

result.

Finally, we have explored the extent to which prior

opinions on the EU condition the effects of online

newsgathering and find that this is actually the case.

However, our results go against the presence of

reinforcing effects. We identified significant

differences among Internet effects depending on priors on

the EU. Visiting blogs and forums decreases the

likelihood of voting ‘yes’ among Europhile citizens as

well as among Eurosceptics; moreover, visiting the

website of the Referendum Commission positively impacts

the probability of supporting the treaty among those who

are somewhat ambivalent towards Europe, indicating that

online environments can represent persuasive forces.

While the puzzle of new media effects remains very much

open to debate between studies providing support for the

reinforcing theory and studies challenging it, our

contribution indicates that reinforcement per se does not

suffice as an overarching explanation.

We also need to acknowledge the limitations of our study.

While there is de facto no possibility of comparative

studies of internet effects in EU referenda, our effort

is limited to one country and contextual elements cannot

therefore be evaluated in a comparative form. Moreover,

we are unable to provide controls for other media

consumption, as the survey did not contain questions on

consumption of traditional mass media. Finally, while an

instrumental variable approach would resolve concerns

about reverse causality, the limited variation in

broadband coverage among survey respondents (90% live in

areas with broadband coverage) and the interpretative

difficulties in combining an instrumental-variable

approach with causal mediation analysis limit the

viability of this technique.

Even accounting for such limitations, our findings have

important implications for scholars concerned with the

effects of the new media. These effects are real, and

will possibly grow in the very near future. If the World

Wide Web impacts on citizens’ vote choices via channels

other than enhanced knowledge about the issue at stake,

it is essential to address the questions of whether and

how noise prevails. The internet has dramatically changed

information consumption patterns across Europe, and while

the availability of more and more diverse information is

a positive feature, additional research should address

the potential for noise and confusion in the online

information environment. If this environment does not

enlighten preferences via increased understanding of the

issue at stake, it is necessary to dig deeper into the

mechanism that connects online information and voting

behaviour to unveil what drives this relationship.

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Reports

European Commission:

European Parliament Eurobarometer (EB/EP 78.2).February 2013. 17 Nov. - 2 Dec. 2012, carried out byTNS Opinion.

European Parliament Eurobarometer (EB/EP 77.4)August 2012. Fieldwork 2-17 June 2012, carried outby TNS Opinion.Eurobarometer 75.2. 2011. Fieldwork 13 April – 08May 2011, carried out by TNS Opinion.

Figure 1. Trust in the European Union among voters, by

vote choice.

Figure 2. Knowledge about the Fiscal Treaty, by Internet

use.

Figure 3. Online information consumption among voters, by

vote choice.

Figure 4. Path Analysis Testing the Mediating Role of

Knowledge about the Fiscal Treaty.

Table 1. Causal mediation analysis: impact of online newsgathering on knowledge about the treatyand vote choice

Model 8 Model 9 Model 10 Model 11

Whole sample Trust EU a lot Trust EU a littleNot trust the EU

at all

VariablesMediato

r OutcomeMediato

r OutcomeMediato

r OutcomeMediato

r OutcomeKnowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Knowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Knowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Knowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Blogs and forums 0,14 -0.26 -0,05 -1.92** 0,16 0.66 0.67** -4.74***(0.09) (0.41) (0.13) (0.82) (0.12) (0.52) (0.29) (1.73)

Knowledge of the Treaty -0.12 -0.43 0.22 -1.44*(0.28) (0.52) (0.26) (0.74)

Rural -0,01 -0.04 -0,02 -0.61* -0,04 0.03 0,12 -1.46***(0.03) (0.17) (0.05) (0.35) (0.04) (0.17) (0.09) (0.41)

Age -0,03 0.01 0,03 0.09-

0.10*** -0.08 -0,04 0.74*(0.03) (0.12) (0.04) (0.19) (0.03) (0.16) (0.08) (0.40)

Class -0,03 -0.28* 0,001 -0.48** -0,01 -0.17 -0,09 -0.43(0.03) (0.15) (0.04) (0.21) (0.03) (0.17) (0.08) (0.27)

Working status -0,02 0.03 -0,07 -0.17 0,03 -0.03 0,06 0.22(0.02) (0.12) (0.03) (0.18) (0.03) (0.12) (0.07) (0.34)

Trust in the EU -0.07 1.51*** -0.07 1.23*** -0.04 1.78*** 0.14* 4.14***(0.05) (0.21) (0.11) (0.33) (0.05) (0.31) (0.08) (0.83)

Bankruptcy 0,09 -0.62** 0,04 -1.59* -0,05 -0.30 0,36 0.65(0.09) (0.31) (0.15) (0.85) (0.10) (0.46) (0.29) (1.02)

Trust in government 0.14* 0.86*** 0.25** 0,56 0.05 1.06*** 0.10 3.41***(0.07) (0.27) (0.12) (0.57) (0.07) (0.36) (0.19) (0.79)

Satisfaction with government 2.01*** 8.98*** 2.20*** 13.37*** 2.35*** 8.71*** 1.61* 20.90***

(0.22) (1.26) (0.37) (3.12) (0.30) (1.38) (0.89) (6.17)

Marginal effect of internet -3% -18% 5% -23%

[-11%,6%]

[-31%, -5%]

[-3%,15%]

[-39%, -7%]

Average mediation -0.001 0.001 0.004 -0.02***[-0.01, 0.01] [-0.01, 0.01] [-0.004, 0.01] [-0.05, -0.001]

Average direct effect -0.03 -0.14*** -0.07 -0.11***

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Whole sample Trust EU a lot Trust EU a littleNot trust the EU at

all

VariablesMediato

r OutcomeMediato

r OutcomeMediato

r OutcomeMediato

r OutcomeKnowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Knowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Knowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Knowledge ofthe

treaty Vote

Internet 0.27*** -0.51* 0.20** -0.73 0.29*** -0.66* 0.57*** -0.54(0.06) (0.26) (0.09) (0.48) (0.07) (0.35) (0.15) (1.08)

Knowledge of the Treaty 0.02 0.69 0.07 -2.01***(0.25) (0.51) (0.30) (0.71)

Rural 0.004 -0.25** 0,03 0.11 -0,03 -0.35*** 0,07 -1.12***(0.02) (0.11) (0.03) (0.21) (0.03) (0.12) (0.06) (0.39)

Age 0.04* 0.14 0.10*** 0.18 -0,02 0.12 0.12* 0.11(0.02) (0.10) (0.03) (0.18) (0.03) (0.13) (0.06) (0.42)

Class -0.03** -0.22*** -0.04* -0.48*** -0,03 -0.12 -0,02 -0.32(0.02) (0.08) (0.02) (0.14) (0.02 (0.10) (0.04) (0.27)

Working status -0.005 -0.03 -0.02 0.09 -0,003 -0.05 0,04 0.42(0.02) (0.07) (0.03) (0.14) (0.02) (0.10) (0.04) (0.39)

Trust in the EU -0.04 0.85***(0.06) (0.24)

Bankruptcy 0.03 1.26*** 0.06 0.65*** 0.02 1.54*** 0.03 3.28***(0.03) (0.15) (0.05) (0.22) (0.04) (0.19) (0.07) (0.61)

Trust in government 0.03 -0.20 0.21 -0.22 -0,11 -0.07 0,19 -0.18(0.08) (0.30) (0.14) (0.65) (0.09) (0.41) (0.16) (0.94)

Satisfaction with government -0.002 1.04*** 0.13 0.64 -0.05 1.34*** -0.11 1.70**

(0.06) (0.23) (0.10) (0.53) (0.07) (0.30) (0.13) (0.69)Constant 1.58*** 7.08*** 1.34*** 5.08* 1.94*** 9.31*** 0,04 18.18***

(0.22) (1.46) (0.33) (2.62) (0.21) (1.28) (0.68) (4.47)

Marginal effect of internet -5% -8% -6% -3%

[-10%, -0.2%]

[-18%,2%]

[-12%, -0.1%]

[-17%,10%]

Average mediation 0.002 0.01 0.002 -0.06***[ -0.01, 0.01] [ -0.03, 0.002] [ -0.02, 0.01] [ -0.10, -0.01]

Average direct effect -0.05 -0.05 -0.07*** -0.03

[ -0.0, 0.01] [ -0.01, 0.10] [ -0.13, -0.01] [ -0.13, 0.06]