Do new technologies change the way political markets work in a democracy? We study the impact of adopting a new technology on campaign contributions received by candidates running for the U.S. Congress. To identify the causal impact of joining Twitter, we compare donations just before and just after politicians open an account in regions with high and low levels of Twitter penetration, controlling for politician-month fixed effects. We estimate that opening a Twitter account amounts to an increase of at least 2-3% percent in donations per campaign. Moreover, this effect holds only for inexperienced politicians who have never been elected to the Congress before. Placebo checks suggest that this impact is not driven by concurrent increase in information about these politicians in newspapers or blogs, TV ads, or campaign expenditures. The gain from opening a Twitter account is stronger for donations coming from new as opposed to repeat donors, for politicians who tweet more informatively, and for politicians from regions with lower newspaper circulation. Overall, our findings suggest that a new communication technology can lower the barriers to entry in political contests by increasing new politicians' opportunities of informing voters and fund-raising.

中文翻译：

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社交媒体和政治贡献：新技术对政治竞争的影响

新技术是否会改变政治市场在民主国家运作的方式？我们研究了采用新技术对竞选美国国会候选人的竞选捐款的影响。为了确定加入Twitter的因果关系，我们比较了政客在Twitter渗透率高低的地区开设账户之前和之后的捐款，以控制政客月份的固定影响。我们估计，开设Twitter帐户每个活动的捐款至少增加2-3％。此外，这种效果只保存了谁以前从未被当选为国会经验的政治家。安慰剂检查表明，这种影响并非由报纸或博客，电视广告或竞选支出中有关这些政客的信息同时增加所驱动。从Twitter开户的收益对于来自新捐赠者（而不是重复捐赠者），推文内容更多的政治人物以及报纸发行量较低地区的政治人物而言，收益更大。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，新的通信技术可以通过增加新政客​​告知选民和筹集资金的机会来降低参加政治竞赛的障碍。