The effects of WhatsApp on exposure to misinformation and political attitudes: Evidence from a multimedia-constrained deactivation experiment

.title[
# <span style="font-size: 80%;"> The effects of WhatsApp on exposure to misinformation and political attitudes: Evidence from a multimedia-constrained deactivation experiment </span>
]
.author[
### Tiago Ventura, Rajeshwari Majumdar, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker <br> <br><span style="font-size: 80%;">Center for Social Media and Politics, NYU</span>
]
.date[
### <span style="font-size: 80%;"> <br> Laboratório de Ciência Computacional e Experimental - UFPE, 06/15/2023 </span>
]

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<div class="my-footer"><span>Tiago Ventura (CSMaP) &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Laboratório de Ciência Computacional e Experimental - UFPE </span></div>

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### From Liberation to Turmoil: The Misinformation Turn

[From Liberation to Turmoil, Tucker et. al., 2019](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/671987)
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## Three insights from the recent literature on social media and misinformation.

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## 1) People .red[aren’t] actually exposed to a lot of .red[misinformation] – but exposure is heavily concentrated. 
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<img src="gringer.png" width="100%" />
.center[[Grinberg et al., 2019](https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.aau2706)]

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## 2) The downstream effects of exposure to misinformation on political atttitudes are .red[difficult to measure, often small in size, and context dependent].

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### .center[Exposure to IRA Russian Misinformation on Twitter  doesn’t lead to changes in attitudes]

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### .center[Causal effects of social media are context-dependent]

.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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## 3) Most of the scholarly evidence come from a .red[advanced democracies] and from a .red[few platforms] (mostly Twitter, and to some extent Facebook)

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]

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## Today's Presentation

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.red[Research Problem:] What are the causal effect of WhatsApp usage on beliefs for misinformation and its downstream effects, particularly political polarization?

- Incentivized participants to spent three weeks without accessing any multimedia (images, videos and audio) on WhatsApp.

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.red[Results:]

- Substantive reduction in **exposure to popular misinformation rumors**.

- Unable to detect small to moderate effects on **attitudes (belief accuracy and polarization)**

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### Deactivation Studies on Facebook

<img src="deactivation_studies.png" width="90%" />
.pull-left[.center[Facebook Deactivation in the US [Alcott et al., 2020](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658)]]

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

---

- 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

**Completed**: 773 respondents
]

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## Compliance Checks

**Compliance Tasks:**

- Screenshots of WhatsApp storage intormation

- Every week + final survey

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

]

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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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## Hypotheses

H1: Deactivated users will report lower levels of previous exposure to FALSE rumors.

H2a: Deactivated  will display a higher ability to accurately identify FALSE rumors.

H2b Deactivated users will display lower levels of mainstream news knowledge.

H3: Deactivated will display lower levels of outgroup political polarization.

H4: Deactivated will display higher levels of the aggregated index of subjective well-being.

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## Recruitment and Power Analysis

**Attrition Rate:** 5.3%.

]

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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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### Belief Accuracy Conditional on WhatsApp usage for Politics

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

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### Polarization Outcomes

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## Discussion

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## Limitations

- Scope conditions: focus on direct effects of WhatsApp.

- Larger effect might exist exactly in hard to reach groups.

- Small effect size vs power

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## Next steps.

### Replication, Replication, Replication

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## Extra points for discussion

- Pre-Analysis plan

- Pilot(s)

- Interacting with participants

- Costs of running a field experiment

- Researching on a "natural science" style lab

- PhD in the United States

- Job Market

- etc..
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## Obrigado!!