Communication Technology advancement and political outcomes in the developing world: Evidence from 4G proliferation in Indonesia

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of 4G internet expansion on voter turnout in Indonesia's 2019 and 2024 general elections, drawing on novel subdistrict-level administrative data that combines 4G coverage records from the Ministry of Communication and Technology with official vote recapitulation data from the General Election Committee. To address the selection bias of the 4G infrastructure roll out, we control for subdistrict and year fixed effect to account for subdistrict unobserved heterogeneity across the election cycles. Across both presidential and legislative contests, greater 4G coverage is associated with lower turnout: −0.009 percentage points in the presidential election and −0.030, −0.018, and −0.014 percentage points in the national, provincial, and district legislative elections, respectively. Nevertheless, these magnitude of turnout response to changes in 4G access are economically small. Our results are robust across specifications, including models that exclude Java, a region central to Indonesia's economic development and electoral dynamics. We also find suggestive evidence on the channel of how internet access decrease voters' turnout: Increased internet access may contribute to information overload and disinformation, reducing incentives to vote, while the preference to spend leisure time online may further discourage electoral participation during election public holidays.