We model pay-as-you-go social security systems as the outcome of majority voting within a overlapping generations model with production. When voting, individuals make two choices, pay the elderly their pensions or default, which amount to promise themselves next period. Under general circumstances, there exist equilibria where pensions are voted into existence and maintained. Our analysis uncov...

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the extent social media is enabling e-democracy in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The study conducts an interpretative case study approach interviewing active social media users, political actors, civil servants, civilians, civil society actors and tertiary students. The study also conducts a content analysis of popular “political social media” Facebook pages i...

The relationship between social media use and youth’s political participation has been extensively studied. However, explanations for youth’s online collective political activism have been less explored. Previous studies have used the concept of internal political efficacy to examine the relationship between social media and political participation. However, this concept only explains individua...

Existing research on the effect of social media use on political behavior has yielded mixed results to date, demonstrating the importance of research examining the effects of varying types of social media communication on political behavior. The experiment reported in this study provides valuable insights into the role of social media in elections. A longitudinal experiment was conducted to ass...

We argue that the political effects of negativity bias are narrower than Hibbing et al. suggest. Negativity bias reliably predicts social, but not economic, conservatism, and its political effects often vary across levels of political engagement. Thus the role of negativity bias in broad ideological conflict depends on the strategic packaging of economic and social attitudes by political elites.

The article deals with the issue of political participation in the network society. It examines how new forms of public communication enabled by ICT mediated communication (especially new media), as well as virtual socialization and the resulting new social structures (especially social networks), affect political participation, particularly citizens’ influence on the government and the politic...

Almost all democratic societies evolved socially and politically out of authoritarian and nondemocratic regimes. These changes not only altered the allocation of economic resources in society but also the structure of political power. In this paper, we develop a framework for studying the dynamics of political and social change. The society consists of agents that care about current and future ...

The news feeds of two U.S. politicians’ Facebook sites were examined across 22 months leading up to an election 6 in order to explore changes in social-network-mediated public political discourse over time. Changes over time were observed 7 in who was being addressed and in the affective valence of comments. A complex flow of attention between in-group and 8 out-group concerns was observed with...

The power and role played by social media in developing social and political movements for political changes in North Africa and the Middle East have transformed how social media viewed and used. To date, few IS studies have investigated the role of Information Systems in the context of politics. The goal of this paper is to understand the role of social media including micro-blogs and social n...