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Citizens and Governments on the Internet:
Experimenting with information effects
Helen Margetts
www.governmentontheweb.org
How do information environments on the internet affect political
behaviour?Information seeking
What people find (how government and political organizations present themselves)
‘Social information’
Feedback, co-production, co-creation
Social networks, peer-to-peer interactions, chain reactions
Differential demographics, personalities, access, skills
How can we investigate information effects?
Experimental approachVarying information across control and treatment groupsRandom allocationPossibility of causal inference (internal validity)
Design variationsLaboratory experiments (eg. Grimmelikhuijsen, 2010)Field experiments (eg. Gerber and Green, 2008;
Goldstein,2008; Schultz, 1998) Internet blurs field/laboratory distinction
laboratory in field, field in laboratoryTo become ‘virtual laboratory’ (see Salganik et al, 2006,
2009)
Collective Action on the Internet
Social information and political participation
Effect of social information:hypotheses
High numbers of signatories could have:
Negative effect (can free-ride, Olson)
Positive effect (critical mass, bandwagon effect)
Low numbers of signatories could have:
Negative effect (hopeless cause)
Positive effect (make a difference, Olson)
Relationship between participation and expected participation according to Schelling (2006: 104)
Experimental DesignQuasi-field Experiment
668 subjects from OxLab
Participating remotely via custom-built interface
Paid £6-8
6 petitions on global issues
Control: no social information
Randomized treatments with ‘high’, ‘low’, ‘middle’ nos. of signatories
Low Medium High
Treatment: number of other signatories
P1: Human Rights in TibetP2: Cluster BombP3: End WhalingP4: Protect DarfurP5: Climate ChangeP6: Fair Trade
Subjects Signing Petitions (by number of other signatories)
Low Medium High
Treatment: number of other signatories
P1: Human Rights in TibetP2: Cluster BombP3: End WhalingP4: Protect DarfurP5: Climate ChangeP6: Fair Trade
Subjects Donating to Petitions (by number of other signatories)
Citizen-government interactions
Information Effects on Citizens’ Propensity to Seek
Redress
When do citizens seek redress?
H1: Documentary evidence
H2: Social information: what other people are doing
H3: According to their personality (locus of control)
H4: Nature of the issue
H5: Ease or difficulty in locating information on how to complain
Experimental Design7 scenarios, involving tax, police, benefits, social
care, healthcare, private sector comparator
Subjects seek information on how to complain – then asked if they will complain
Control group: no additional information
Documentary evidence treatment
Social information treatment (real time feedback)
Pre-experiment questionnaire – agreement with issue
Post-experiment questionnaire, including personality questions
Analysis of variance shows that severity of issue is highly related to likelihood of complaining (p<<0.001)