The Effects of Social Media, Elites, and Political Polarization on Civil Conflict

Abstract

Although prior research has investigated how social, economic, and political factors affect civil conflict, empirical scholarship has yet to consider how social media impacts civil conflict. Using cross-national research for up to 157 states from 2000–2019, this study examines the effect social media has on civil conflict. We find that more time spent on social media, greater social media penetration (i.e. the number of users), and the specific manner elites use social media are associated with an increased number and severity of civil conflicts. We also carry out mediation analysis and see that elite use of social media to organize offline political activities, government elites’ dissemination of false information, and political party elites’ dissemination of disinformation are all correlated with an increase in political polarization, and polarization raises the likelihood of civil conflict. Our results indicate the ways social media affects political violence, showing how different communication technologies can serve to exacerbate civil conflict under certain conditions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97(1) (2003), 75–90; Scott Gates, “Recruitment and Allegiance: The Microfoundations of Rebellion,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(1) (2002), 111–30; Nick Sambanis, “Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 45(3) (2001), 259–82; Isak Svensson and Desirée Nilsson, “Disputes over the Divine: Introducing the Religion and Armed Conflict (RELAC) Data, 1975 to 2015,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(5) (2017), 1127–1148.

2 Nick Sambanis, “What Is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 48(6) (2004), 814–58; Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil War, 1816–1980 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982), 205–206.

3 CBS News: 60 Minutes, “Highlights from 60 Minutes’ Interview with the Facebook Whistleblower,” 3 October 2021. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebookwhistleblower-60-minutes-highlights-2021-10-03/

4 Pablo Barberá, “How Social Media Reduces Mass Political Polarization. Evidence from Germany, Spain, and the U.S.,” Paper Prepared for the 2015 APSA Conference; Geoff Dean, Peter Bell, and Jack Newman, “The Dark Side of Social Media: Review of Online Terrorism,” Pakistan Journal of Criminology 3(3) (2012), 103–12; Petter Nesser and Anne Stenersen, “The Modus Operandi of Jihadi Terrorists in Europe,” Perspectives on Terrorism 8(6) (2014), 2–24; Anne Speckhard and Molly Ellenberg, “Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Facebook Campaigns in Europe,” Journal of Strategic Security 13(3) (2020), 120–48.

5 Barbara F. Walter; "The New New Civil Wars," Annual Review of Political Science 20(1) (2017), 469–86; Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them (Crown Publishing Group NY, 2022).

6 David C. Benson, “Why the Internet is Not Increasing Terrorism,” Security Studies 23(2) (2014), 293–328; Anita R. Gohdes, “Studying the Internet and Violent Conflict,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 35(1) (2017), 89–106; Donald Holbrock, “A Critical Analysis of the Role of the Internet in the Preparation and Planning of Acts of Terrorism,” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 8(2) (2015), 121–33; Nikita Khokhlov and Andrey Korotayev, “Internet, Political Regime and Terrorism: A Quantitative Analysis.” Cross-Cultural Research, 2022. doi:10693971221085343.

7 E.g. Simplice Asongu, Stella-Maris Orim, and Rexon Nting, “Terrorism and Social Media: Global Evidence,” Journal of Global Information Technology Management 22(3) (2019), 208–28; Lance Y. Hunter, Candace E. Griffith, and Thomas Warren, “Internet Connectivity and Domestic Terrorism in Democracies,” International Journal of Sociology 50(3) (2020), 201–19; James A. Piazza, “Fake News: The Effects of Social Media Disinformation on Domestic Terrorism,” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict (2021), 1–23.

8 Ibid.

9 Peter Suciu, “Social Media Platforms and the Lessons Of January 6,” Forbes (2021); Sheera Frenkel, “The Storming of Capitol Hill Was Organized on Social Media,” New York Times (2021); Craig Timberg et al., “Inside Facebook, Jan. 6 Violence Fueled Anger, Regret Over Missed Warning Signs,” The Washington Post (2021).

10 Sheera Frenkel and Davey Alba, “In India, Facebook Grapples with an Amplified Version of Its Problems,” New York Times (2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/23/technology/facebook-india-misinformation.html

11 Google Trends has been used by previous researchers to gauge social media usage patterns (Choi and Varian 2012; Wolfsfeld et al. 2013).

12 “Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term,” Google Trends (2022): https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2020-01-01%202021-01-31&geo=MM-18&q=twitter

13 Global Witness, “Algorithm of Harm: Facebook Amplified Myanmar Military Propaganda Following Coup” (2021), https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/algorithm-harm-facebook-amplified-myanmar-military-propaganda-following-coup/

14 Ibid.

15 Stephanie Nebehay, “Myanmar Death Toll Exceeds 1,500 with Nearly 8,800 in Custody – UN,” Reuters (2021), https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-death-toll-exceeds-1500-with-nearly-8800-custody-un-2022-02-01/

16 Anuradha Rao and Archana Atmakuri, “The Role of Social Media in Myanmar’s CDM: Strengths, Limitations and Perspectives from India,” Institute of South Asian Studies Working Paper (2021), https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/papers/the-role-of-social-media-in-myanmars-cdm-strengths-limitations-and-perspectives-from-india/

17 Soe San Aung, “Myanmar Junta Using Social Media to Track its Opponents,” Radio Free Asia (2022), https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/social-media-03032022175020.html

18 Sambanis, “What Is Civil War?”; Small and Singer, Resort to Arms.

19 Researchers generally define civil conflicts as involving a minimum of 25 conflict related deaths annually (e.g. Lotta Harbom, Erik Melander, and Peter Wallensteen, “Dyadic Dimensions of Armed Conflict, 1946–2007,” Journal of Peace Research 45(5) (2008), 697–710; Therese Pettersson, Shawn Davis, Amber Deniz, Garoun Engström, Nanar Hawach, Stina Högbladh, Margareta Sollenberg, and Magnus Öberg, “Organized Violence 1989–2020, with a Special Emphasis on Syria,” Journal of Peace Research 58(4) (2021), 809–25, while others contend a minimum of 1000 battlefield deaths related to the conflict is a full-scale civil war (see Small and Singer, Resort to Arms).

20 Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; Gates, “Recruitment and Allegiance”; Sambanis, “Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars”; Svensson and Nilsson, “Disputes over the Divine.”

21 Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1953); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).

22 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 56(4) (2004), 563–95; Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.”

23 Ibid.

24 Håvard Hegre, Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates, and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992,” The American Political Science Review 95(1) (2001), 33–48; Jonas Lindberg and Camilla Orjuela, “Corruption and Conflict: Connections and Consequences in War-Torn Sri Lanka,” Conflict, Security & Development 11(2) (2011), 205–33; Natascha S. Neudorfer and Ulrike G. Theuerkauf, “Buying War Not Peace: The Influence of Corruption on the Risk of Ethnic War,” Comparative Political Studies 47(13) (2014), 1856–1886; Abbey Steele and Livia Schubiger, “Democracy and Civil War: The Case of Colombia,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 35(6) (2018), 586–600.

25 Eric Rasmussen, Narissa Punyanut-Carter, Jenna LaFreniere, Mary Norman, and Thomas Kimball, “The Serially Mediated Relationship between Emerging Adults’ Social Media Use and Mental Well-Being,” Computers in Human Behavior 102(1) (2020), 206–13; Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Joiner, and Keith Campbell, “Underestimating Digital Media Harm,” Nature Human Behavior 4(4) (2020), 346–48.

26 Barberá, “How Social Media”; Michael Conover, Bruno Gonçalves, Alessandro Flammini, and Filippo Menczer, “Partisan Asymmetries in Online Political Activity,” EPJ Data Science 1(1) (2012), 1–19; Rosie Parkyn, “The Role of Social Media in Development, BBC News (2017), https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mediaactioninsight/entries/63e297a8-83b6-456d-aff5-67dc55f45d27

27 L. Bennett, “Communicating Global Activism: Strength and Vulnerabilities of Networked Politics,” in Cyberprotest: New Media, Citizens and Social Movements, ed. W. van de Donk, B. D. Loader, P. G. Nixon, and D. Rucht (London: Routledge, 2006); B. Bimber, A. J. Flanagin, and C. Stohl, “Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment,” Communication Theory 15 (4) (2005): 365–88; B. Bimber, A. J. Flanagin, and C. Stohl, Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).

28 Joel Schectman, "Iran’s Twitter Revolution? Maybe Not Yet," Business Week 17(07) (2009): 2009.

29 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Elad Segev, and Tamir Sheafer, "Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First," The International Journal of Press/Politics 18(2) (2013): 115–37.

30 Dean, Bell, and Newman, “The Dark Side of Social Media”; Nesser and Stenersen, “The Modus Operandi”; Speckhard and Ellenberg, “Breaking the ISIS Brand.”

31 Imran Awan, “Uber-Extremism: Isis and the Power of Social Media,” Society 54(2) (2017), 138–49; Paulina Wu, “Impossible to Regulate: Social Media, Terrorists, and the Role for the UN,” Chicago Journal of International Law 16 (2015), 281; Mason Youngblood, “Extremist Ideology as a Complex Contagion: The Spread of Far-Right Radicalization in the United States between 2005 and 2017,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7(1) (2020), 1–10.

32 Wolfsfeld et al., “Social Media and the Arab Spring.”

33 Hunter et al., “Internet Connectivity.”

34 Asongu et al., “Terrorism and Social Media.”

35 Piazza, “Fake News.”

36 Asongu et al., “Terrorism and Social Media”; Hunter et al., “Internet Connectivity”; Piazza, “Fake News.”

37 Hunter et al., “Internet Connectivity”; Piazza, “Fake News.”

38 José G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol, “Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars,” American Economic Review 95(3) (2005), 796–816; Gudrun Østby, “Polarization, Horizontal Inequalities and Violent Civil Conflict,” Journal of Peace Research 45(2) (2018), 143–62; Marta Reynal-Querol, “Ethnicity, Political Systems, and Civil Wars,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(1) (2002), 29–54.

39 See ibid., who find greater economic, religious, and ethnic polarization increase civil conflict by elevating group tensions to the point of violence.

40 Christopher Bail, Lisa Argyle, Taylor Brown, John Bumpus, Haohan Chen, M. B. Fallin Hunzaker, Jaemin Lee, Marcus Mann, Friedolin Merhout, and Alexander Volfovsky, “Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115(37) (2018), 9216–21; John Kelly and Camille François, “This is What Filter Bubbles Actually Look Like,” MIT Technology Review (2018), https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/22/140661/this-is-what-filterbubbles-actually-look-like/; Ines Von Behr, Anaïs Reding, Charlie Edwards, and Luke Gribbon, “Radicalisation in the Digital Era: The Use of the Internet in 15 Cases of Terrorism and Violent Extremism,” RAND Europe (2013), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR453.html; Youngblood, “Extremist Ideology.”

41 Relatedly, one defining feature that separates civil conflict from domestic terrorism is that civil conflict often involves group participation whereas domestic terrorism may involve groups or individuals.

42 Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, “Ethnic Polarization”; Østby, “Polarization, Horizontal Inequalities”; Reynal-Querol, “Ethnicity.”

43 Anna O. Pechenkina and D. Scott Bennett, “Violent and Non-Violent Strategies of Counterinsurgency,” Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 20(4) (2017), 11. doi:10.18564/jasss.3540.

44 Bail et al., “Exposure to Opposing Views”; Kelly and François, “This is What Filter Bubbles”; Von Behr et al., “Radicalisation in the Digital Era”; Youngblood, “Extremist Ideology.”

45 Carolina Holgersson Ivarsson, “Lion’s Blood: Social Media, Everyday Nationalism, and Anti-Muslim Mobilisation among Sinhala-Buddhist Youth,” Contemporary South Asia 27(2) (2019), 145–59.

46 Yaofen Zheng and Renbin Xiao, “Modeling and Simulation of Polarization in Internet Group Opinions Based on Cellular Automata,” Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society (2015), 1–15.

47 Luke Munn, “Angry by Design: Toxic Communication and Technical Architectures,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7(1) (2020), 1–11; Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You (New York, NY: Penguin Press 2011).

48 Ivarsson, “Lion’s Blood”; Kelly and François, “This is What Filter Bubbles”; Ilkka, Koiranen, Aki Koivula, Sanna Malinen, and Teo Keipi, "Undercurrents of Echo Chambers and Flame Wars: Party Political Correlates of Social Media Behavior," Journal of Information Technology & Politics 19(2) (2022): 197–213; Von Behr et al., “Radicalisation in the Digital Era.”

49 Kelly and François, “This is What Filter Bubbles”; Von Behr et al., “Radicalisation in the Digital Era”; Ilkka Koiranen, Aki Koivula, Sanna Malinen, and Teo Keipi, “Undercurrents of Echo Chambers and Flame Wars: Party Political Correlates of Social Media Behavior,” Journal of Information Technology and Politics 19(2) (2022), 197–213.

50 United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Preventing Extremism in Fragile States: A New Approach. Task Force on Extremism on Violent States (2019).

51 Bail et al., “Exposure to Opposing Views.”

52 Christopher Hare and Keith Poole, “The Polarization of Contemporary America Politics,” Polity 46(3) (2014), 411–29; Dag Wollebaek, Rune Karlsen, Kari Steen-Johnsen, and Bernard Enjolras, “Anger, Fear, and Echo Chambers: The Emotional Basis for Online Behavior,” Social Media + Society 5(2) (2019), 1–14.

53 Ibid.

54 Bail et al., “Exposure to Opposing Views”; Kelly and François, “This is What Filter Bubbles”; Von Behr et al., “Radicalisation in the Digital Era.”

55 John C. Amble, "Combating Terrorism in the New Media Environment," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 35(5) (2012), 339–53; Stephan Winter, "Impression-Motivated News Consumption: Are User Comments in Social Media More Influential than on News Sites," Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications 31(4) (2019), 203.

56 Youngblood, “Extremist Ideology.”

57 Cengiz Erisen, "Psychological Foundations and Behavioral Consequences of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Beliefs: The Turkish Case," International Political Science Review (2022): 01925121221084625; Adam M. Enders, Joseph E. Uscinski, Michelle I. Seelig, Casey A. Klofstad, Stefan Wuchty, John R. Funchion, Manohar N. Murthi, Kamal Premaratne, and Justin Stoler, "The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation," Political Behavior (2021): 1–24; Orestis,Papakyriakopoulos, Juan Carlos Medina Serrano, and Simon Hegelich,"The Spread of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories on Social Media and the Effect of Content Moderation," The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review 18 (2020).

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59 Emma L. Henderson, Daniel J. Simons, and Dale J. Barr, "The Trajectory of Truth: A Longitudinal Study of the Illusory Truth Effect," Journal of Cognition 4(1) (2021); Lisa K. Fazio, Nadia M. Brashier, B. Keith Payne, and Elizabeth J. Marsh, "Knowledge Does Not Protect Against Illusory Truth," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144 (5) (2015): 993; Lisa K. Fazio, David G. Rand, and Gordon Pennycook, “Repetition Increases Perceived Truth Equally for Plausible and Implausible Statement,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 26(5) (2019): 1705–10.

60 Stanley, “How Propaganda Works”; Zeitzoff, “How Social Media.”

61 Marina Azzimonti and Marcos Fernandes, "Social Media Networks, Fake News, and Polarization," European Journal of Political Economy (2022): 102256.

62 Joshua D. Kertzer and Jonathan Renshon, “Experiments and Surveys on Political Elites,” Annual Review of Political Science 25 (2022), 529–50.

63 Jan Pakulski and András Körösényi, Toward Leader Democracy (London-New York-Delhi, Anthem Press, 2012).

64 Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders, “Is Polarization a Myth?,” The Journal of Politics 70(2) (2008), 542–55.

65 Morris Fiorina, Samuel Abrams, and Jeremy Pope, “Polarization in the American Public: Misconceptions and Misreadings,” The Journal of Politics 70(2) (2008), 556–60; R. John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

66 András Körösényi, “Political Polarization and Its Consequences on Democratic Accountability,” Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 4(2) (2013), 18.

67 Marc J. Hetherington, "Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization," American Political Science Review 95(3) (2001): 619–31; Abramowitz and Saunders, “Is Polarization a Myth?”

68 J. A. Tucker, A. Guess, P. Barbera, C. Vaccari, A. Siegel, S. Sanovich, D. Stukal, and B. Nyhan, “Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific literature” (2018). Available at SSRN 3144139.

69 John H. Aldrich, et al., “Getting Out the Vote in the Social Media Era: Are Digital Tools Changing the Extent, Nature and Impact of Party Contacting in Elections?,” Party Politics 22(2) (2016), 165–78.

70 Data Reportal, Global Overview (2022), https://datareportal.com/

71 T. Clark Durant and Michael Weintraub, “How to Make Democracy Self-Enforcing After Civil War: Enabling Credible Yet Adaptable Elite Pacts,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 31(5) (2014), 521–40; Aila M. Matanock and Miguel García-Sánchez, “The Colombian Paradox: Peace Processes, Elite Divisions and Popular Plebiscites,” Daedalus 146(4) (2017), 152–66; Sema Hande Ogutcu-Fu, “Outside the Battlefield: In-group Political Dynamics of Civil Conflict Negotiations and Settlements,” Political Research Quarterly 69(3) (2016), 403–17.

72 Damir Kovačević, “Visions of Greater Serbia: Local Dynamics and the Prijedor Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 14(1) (2020), 105–23; Pamela Paglia, “Ethnicity and Tribalism: Are These the Root Causes of the Sudanese Civil Conflicts?,” Africa Economic Analysis (2007), 22–38.

73 Larry Diamond, “Liberation Technology,” Journal of Democracy 21(3) (2010), 69–83; Thomas Zeitzoff, “How Social Media is Changing Conflict,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 61(9) (2017), 1970–91.

74 Aldrich, et al., “Getting Out the Vote.”

75 Piazza, “Fake News.”

76 Zeitzoff, “How Social Media.”

77 Kelly and Francois, “This is What Filter Bubbles”; Jason Stanley, How Propaganda Works (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).

78 Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, “Ethnic Polarization”; Østby, “Polarization, Horizontal Inequalities”; Reynal-Querol, “Ethnicity.”

79 AU, Ho, and Chiu, "The Role of Online Misinformation”; Piazza, “Fake News.”

80 Well Deutsche, “WhatsApp in India: Scourge of Violence-Inciting Fake News Tough to Tackle” (2022), https://www.dw.com/en/whatsapp-in-india-scourge-of-violence-inciting-fake-news-tough-to-tackle/a-52709823

81 Frenkel et al., “In India, Facebook Grapples.”

82 Ibid.

83 Matt Rourke, “Facebook Dithered in Curbing Divisive User Content in India. The Associated Press” (2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/10/23/1048746697/facebook-misinformation-india

84 Frenkel et al., “In India, Facebook Grapples.”

85 Data Reportal, Global Overview.

86 Nils Petter Gleditsch, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and Håvard Strand, “Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 39(5) (2022); Shawn Davies, Therese Pettersson, and Magnus Öberg, “Organized Violence 1989–2021 and Drone Warfare,” Journal of Peace Research 59(4) (2022).

87 Data Reportal, Global Overview.

88 Gleditsch et al., “Armed Conflict”; Davies et al., “Organized Violence.”

89 Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, Two Thailands: Clashing Political Orders and Entrenched Polarization (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020).

90 Ibid.

91 Marina Azzimonti and Marcos Fernandes, “Social Media Networks, Fake News, and Polarization,” European Journal of Political Economy (2022), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2022.102256; Piazza, “Fake News”; Joshua A. Tucker et al., “Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature” (2018), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144139.

92 E.g. Piazza, “Fake News.”

93 Harbom et al., “Dyadic Dimensions”; Pettersson et al., “Organized Violence 1989–2020.”

94 Joakim Kreutz, “How and When Armed Conflicts End: Introducing the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research, 47(2) (2010), 243–50; Lotta Themnér and Peter Wallensteen, “Armed Conflicts, 1946–2013,” Journal of Peace Research 51(4) (2014), 541–54; Reed M. Wood, “Rebel Capability and Strategic Violence Against Civilians,” Journal of Peace Research 47(5) (2010), 601–14.

95 For clarity of interpretation purposes, we reverse code the values for the safety and security measure in comparison to the original coding scheme.

96 Global Peace Index, Measuring Peace in a Complex World. 2021. Institute for Economics and Peace. Sydney. http://visionofhumanity.org/reports

97 Data Reportal, Global Overview.

98 The time on social media variable covers 41 states, while the social media penetration variable covers 148 states. We list the states included in the analysis for both variables in Tables A2 and A3 in the Appendix.

99 Carlos Cuello-Garcia, Giordano Pérez-Gaxiola, and Ludo van Amelsvoort. "Social Media Can Have an Impact on How We Manage and Investigate the COVID-19 Pandemic," Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 127 (2020), 198–201; Omer Kutlu, “Analysis of Dermatologic Conditions in Turkey and Italy by Using Google Trends Analysis in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Dermatologic Therapy 33(6) (2020): 1–6; Febbie Austina Kwanda and Trisha Lin, “Fake News Practices in Indonesian Newsrooms During and After the Palu Earthquake: A Hierarchy-of-Influences Approach,” Information, Communication and Society 23(6) (2020), 849–66; U. M. Rodrigues and J. Xu, "Regulation of COVID-19 Fake News Infodemic in China and India,” Media International Australia 177 (1) (2020), 125–131.

100 Valeriya Mechkova, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, and Steven Wilson. 2021. "DSP [Country-Year] Dataset v3," Digital Society Project (DSP).

101 We denote the states included in the analysis with the DSP variables in Tables A1 and A2 in the Appendix.

102 The values for the government and party disinformation variables and polarization measure are reverse coded in comparison to the original coding scheme for clarity of interpretation purposes.

103 Wolfsfeld et al., “Social Media and the Arab Spring.”

104 E.g. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance”; Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency”; Martin, Mayer, and Thoenig, “Civil Wars and International Trade.”

105 World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2020. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators

106 Hegre et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace”; Steele and Schubiger, “Democracy and Civil War.”

107 Michael, Coppedge et al., “V-Dem Codebook v11. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project,” 2021; we also include an alternate democracy measure based on free and fair elections for robustness purposes.

108 Lindberg and Orjuela, “Corruption and Conflict”; Neudorfer, and Theuerkauf, “Buying War Not Peace.”

109 Daniel Kaufmann and Aart Kraay, “Worldwide Governance Indicators” (2021), http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/

110 See Benjamin Crost, Joseph Felter, and Patrick Johnston, “Aid Under Fire: Development Projects and Civil Conflict,” American Economic Review 104(6) (2014), 1833–56; Lance Y. Hunter and Glen Biglaiser, “The Impact of the IMF on Terrorism in the Developing World,” Terrorism and Political Violence 34(3) (2022), 489–513.

111 A. Colin Cameron and Pravin K. Trivedi, Microeconometrics Using Stata (College Station, TX: Stata Press, 2009).

112 E.g. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance”; Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency”; Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, “Ethnic Polarization.”

113 See Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency,” for the fractionalization measure.

114 Coppedge et al. 2021, “V-Dem.”

115 To make sure social media usage patterns changed prior to their effects on civil conflict, we also ran the models with a lagged social media variable. The results remain substantively unchanged, as social media usage continues to exert a positive and statistically significant effect on civil conflict, as well as on the safety and security measure. Due to space limitations, these models are available upon request.

116 The government effectiveness and rule of law measures were taken from the World Bank (2020). The civil society repression, religious repression, and electoral democracy variables were collected from V-Dem (2021). The government social media censorship measure was collected from the DSP (2022).

117 Michael Albertus, "Land reform and civil conflict: Theory and evidence from Peru," American Journal of Political Science 64(2) (2020): 256–74.

118 Reuben Baron and David Kenny, “The Moderator–Mediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research: Conceptual, Strategic, and Statistical Considerations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51(6) (1986), 1173–82; Todd Little, Todd, Noel Card, James Bovaird, Kristopher Preacher, and Christian Crandall, “Structural Equation Modeling of Mediation and Moderation with Contextual Factors,” in Modeling Contextual Effects in Longitudinal Studies, ed. Todd Little, James Bovaird, and Noel Card (New York, Routledge 2007), 207–30; JeeWon Cheong and David MacKinnon, “Mediation/Indirect Effects in Structural Equation Modeling,” in Handbook of Structural Equation Modeling, ed. R. H. Hoyle, 417–435 (New York: The Guilford Press, 2012).

119 Baron and Kenny, “The Moderator–Mediator Variable”; Kosuke Imai Luke Keele, and Teppei Yamamoto, “Identification, Inference and Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Mediation Effects,” Statistical Science 25(1) (2010), 51–71.

120 Booil Jo, “Causal Inference in Randomized Experiments with Mediational Processes,” Psychological Methods 13(4) (2008), 314–36.

121 Each model contains the control variables found in the previous models. Due to space constraints, tables displaying the full results of all control variables are available upon request.

122 Barberá and Rivero, “How Social Media”; Dean, Bell, and Newman, “The Dark Side of Social Media”; Nesser and Stenersen, “The Modus Operandi”; Speckhard and Ellenberg, “Breaking the ISIS Brand.”

123 Benson, “Why the Internet”; Gohdes, “Studying the Internet”; Holbrock, “A Critical Analysis”; Khokhlov and Korotayev, “Internet, Political Regime and Terrorism.”

124 Asongu et al., “Terrorism and Social Media”; Hunter et al., “Internet Connectivity”; Piazza, “Fake News.”

125 John Naughton, “An Ugly Truth by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang Review – Facebook’s Battle for Domination” (18 July 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/18/an-ugly-truth-inside-facebook-battle-for-domination-sheera-frenkel-cecilia-kang-review; CBS News: 60 Minutes, “Highlights from 60 Minutes’ interview.”

126 Asongu et al., “Terrorism and Social Media”; Hunter et al., “Internet Connectivity.”

127 Piazza, “Fake News.”

128 Bail et al., “Exposure to Opposing Views”; Kelly and Francois, “This is What Filter Bubbles”; Von Behr et al., “Radicalisation in the Digital Era”; Youngblood, “Extremist Ideology.”

129 Barberá and Rivero, “How Social Media”; Dean, Bell, and Newman, “The Dark Side of Social Media”; Nesser and Stenersen, “The Modus Operandi”; Speckhard and Ellenberg, “Breaking the ISIS Brand.”

130 Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, “Ethnic Polarization”; Østby, “Polarization, Horizontal Inequalities”; Reynal-Querol, “Ethnicity.”