Misinformation Exposure Beyond Traditional Feeds: Evidence from a WhatsApp Deactivation Experiment

.title[
# <span style="font-size: 70%;"> Misinformation Exposure Beyond Traditional Feeds: Evidence from a WhatsApp Deactivation Experiment</span>
]
.author[
### Tiago Ventura, Rajeshwari Majumdar, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker <br> <br><span style="font-size: 80%;">Georgetown University & Center for Social Media and Politics, NYU</span>
]
.date[
### <span style="font-size: 80%;"> <br> DISINFORMATION, [SOCIAL] MEDIA WAR: Data, Actors, Processes & Impacts </span>
]

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<div class="my-footer"><span>Tiago Ventura (Georgetown University) &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp </span></div>

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## Research on Social Media and its effects

- Existing research: focused primarily on feed-based platforms that are
popular in advanced democracies (Twitter, Facebook)

- But in the Global South
   -  The types of social media platforms that are predominantly used are fundamentally different (message-based; WhatsApp)
   - Different affordances/platforms shapes the types of misinformation that is more prevalent 
   - Over 80% of existing studies on interventions to correct misinformation focus on Global North countries  .midgrey[(Blair et. al. 2023,  Badrinathan and Chauchard, 2023)]
   - The harmful offline consequences of misinformation exposure may be more pronounced

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.content-box-gray[Identify the causal effects of **.red[WhatsApp usage]** on **.red[exposure to online rumors]** and its downstream effects on **.red[belief accuracy]** and **.red[political attitudes]**]

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## Deactivation Studies

.pull-left[
.center[Facebook Deactivation in the US [(Alcott et al., 2020)](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658)]
]

.center[Facebook Deactivation in Bosnia and Herzegovina [(Asimovic et. al, 2022)](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022819118)]
]

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### Our Experiment

- Disable their automatic download of media on WhatsApp.
- Do not purposefully click and watch any media on WhatsApp.

- **Start:** Three weeks before general election in Brazil.
- **End:** three days after the voting day.

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# Overview of the Experiment

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## Recruitment

**Method:** Facebook Ads targeting adults Brazil

**Started Recruitment:** September 8th

**Number of respondents:** 1,947

**Screening variables:**

+ Willingness to join: .red[1,8861 participants]
  
  + More 5min WhatsApp daily

+ Only WhatsApp mobile
  
  + More than 2 min to complete recruitment + other quality controls

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## Treatment Assignment

**Start**: September 15.

**Treatment**:

- Turn off the automatic download.
- Three .red[weeks] without consuming any multimedia.
  
**Control**: Three .red[days] without consuming any multimedia.

**Invited**: 1,135 respondents

**Enrolled**: 773 respondents

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## Deactivation

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## Intervention

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## Compliance

**Compliance Tasks:**

- Screenshots of WhatsApp storage intormation

- Every week + final survey

- After the  first compliance check, the control group was re-activated

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## Compliance II

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## Outcomes

**Self-Reported Exposure and Accuracy Judgment**

- False Rumors published on fact-checking webpages during the month of the experiment + True News stories headlines from mainstream media.

**Polarization**

- Affective polarization (Feeling Thermometer).
  - Social Polarization (Willingness to engage with outgroup voter).
  - Issue Polarization (Abortion, gun control, etc..).
  - Perceptions about ideological polarization ('Where do I observe the two main candidates?').

**Subjective Well-being**

- How did you feel for the past three weeks? (Happy, Anxious, etc...).

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# Results

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### First-Stage Results

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### Effects on Exposure to Misinformation Rumors (H1)

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### Reduction in exposure is large for false news (H1)

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### Effects on Belief Accuracy (H2)

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### Effects on Polarization & Subjective Well-Being (H3 & H4)

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## Additional Analyses  (Non Pre-Registered)

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### Exposure and Partisanship

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### Belief Accuracy Conditional on WhatsApp usage for Politics

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### Polarization Outcomes

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## Discussion

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### Next Steps

- **Where:** Three major Global South Democracies: India, South Africa and Brazil.
  - **Interventions:** Two distinct interventions - Multimedia Deactivation and Time Reduction.
  - **Fours weeks** before national elections in India and South Africa and local elections in Brazil.
  - Follow-up survey **two weeks after participants** return to social media.

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# Thank you!