The effects of social media use on control of corruption and moderating role of cultural tightness-looseness

There is increasing scholarly interest in how social media impacts our society. This paper examines the effect of social media usage in reducing corruption at the country level. By analyzing a five-year (2011–2015) panel dataset of 62 countries, our results suggest that the level of social media usage of a country affects the level of perceived control of corruption after controlling for several variables that have been reported to correlate with a country's corruption including GDP per capita, urban population, female population, press freedom and political stability. Furthermore, we find that cultural tightness-looseness, which is defined as the strength of social norms and degree of sanctioning within the society, negatively moderates the relationship between the nation's social media usage and control of corruption. The relationship is stronger for the set of countries with loose culture, and vice versa. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings and future research directions are also discussed.