How Social Media Shapes Political Attitudes Through Substitution

I study how social media shapes political attitudes in Indonesia. In a field experiment among a nearly nationally representative sample (N=1,502), I deactivated five social media platforms for thirty days, finding the intervention reduced perceived corruption, possibly because treated participants had worse access to salient information about incumbent performance. Deactivation also unexpectedly increased religious chauvinism. Follow-up evidence suggests a time-use substitution mechanism: participants blocked from accessing social media reported greater involvement in religious organizations and more exposure to politicized sermons. I corroborate these findings with independently collected survey data, showing that respondents in villages with plausibly exogenous mobile internet coverage report lower satisfaction with government anti-corruption efforts, increased religious tolerance, and also reduced participation in religious organizations. Overall, the findings suggest that social media's effects on political attitudes are highly context-dependent and may chiefly reflect that which it crowds out.