Paper short abstract:

We use a field experiment to study the effects of access to new IT channels of political communication on the efforts voters take to influence their representatives.

Paper long abstract:

We use a field experiment to study the effects of access to channels of political communication on the efforts voters take to influence their representatives. We presented randomly sampled constituents in Uganda with an opportunity to send a text-message to their MP at one of three randomly assigned price levels. In assessing who chose to contact their representatives and what they chose to communicate, we seek to determine whether ICTs can flatten interest articulation and whether strategic considerations result in price-induced changes in the types of communication sent to politicians. Take-up rates of the new technology are about 5% which represents a moderate level of engagement relative to traditional forms of contact. Critically, contrary to concerns that new technology privileges the already privileged, this engagement corresponds to a statistically significant though substantively small, flattening effect, with a greater share of marginalized populations using this channel compared to traditional channels. Nevertheless these new users do not differ on our measures of preferences from the general population or the traditionally engaged population. Price matters too, but we find that the effect of price is more quantitative than qualitative. Making messaging free to voters yields a a 50% increase in messaging but this increase does not substantially alter the representation of marginalized populations or the types of messages that are sent. From an MP's perspective new technology changes the volume but not the information.