Reducing Social Media Usage During Elections: Evidence from a WhatsApp Multi-Country Deactivation Experiment

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# <span style="font-size: 70%;"> Reducing Social Media Usage During Elections: Evidence from a WhatsApp Multi-Country Deactivation Experiment</span>
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.author[
### Tiago Ventura<br> <br><span style="font-size: 80%;">Georgetown University </span>
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.date[
### <span style="font-size: 80%;"> <br> Mortara Research Seminar - April 14th, 2025 </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 Mortara Research Seminar</span></div>

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# Motivation

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##Social Media Effects in Politics
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**From Liberation to Turmoil:** Over the past decade, public debate and academic research have increasingly focused on the negative consequences of social media on society.

- Facilitates the spread of misinformation .midgrey[(Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler 2018; Flaxman, Goel, and Rao 2016)]

- Creates echo chambers .midgrey[(Guess et al. 2023; Sunstein 2018)]

- Exposes users to incivility and radical groups .midgrey[(Bor and Petersen 2022)]

- - Polarizes voters around the world .midgrey[(Banks et al. 2021; Tokita, Guess, and Tarnita 2021; Bail et al. 2018; Settle 2018)]

- Harms mental health .midgrey[(Tromholt 2016; Vanman, Baker, and Tobin 2018; Hanley, Watt, and Coventry 2019)]

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<img src="output/research_misinformation.png" width="110%" />
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### Challenges on Social Media Studies

#### **Challenge 1:** Research is concentrated in a handful of high-income countries .midgrey[(Budak et al.,, 2024)]:

- Effects of social media may be distinct in low-income countries:

- Fewer fact-checking agencies and studies on corrections .midgrey[(Blair et al., 2023)], 
  - Less content moderation from platforms, and 
  - Weaker independent media infra-structure

- Heavier reliance on social media for news .midgrey[(Reuters 2024)]
   
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-  Similarly,  informal networks for information sharing matter more ~ easier to mix true and false information

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#### **Challenge 2:**  Overemphasis on feed-based platforms

- Information consumption and information spread varies greatly across different social media platforms (Feed-Based vs Social Messaging Apps vs Non-Social Graph Apps) .midgrey[(Garimella et al., 2019, Resende et al., 2019, Ventura et al., 2024)]

- Social media messaging apps are more prevalent in the Global South vs feed-based platforms.

- Messaging apps are encrypted, which makes access to data for researchers really challenging!

- With no news feed, most of the viral content has no metadata, no author information, and it travels through quasi-anonymous, multimedia content.

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#### **Challenge 3:** Evidence is mostly correlational

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<img src="output/map_methods.png" width="70%" />
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.footnote[.midgrey[(Lorenz-Spreen et al., 2023)]]

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.content-box-gray[Understand information consumption via messaging apps, and identify causal effects of **.red[WhatsApp Usage]** on **.red[political]** and **.red[non-political]** attitudes.]

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## Research Agenda

#### <svg viewBox="0 0 512 512" style="height:1em;position:relative;display:inline-block;top:.1em;" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">  <path d="M504 256C504 119 393 8 256 8S8 119 8 256s111 248 248 248 248-111 248-248zm-448 0c0-110.5 89.5-200 200-200s200 89.5 200 200-89.5 200-200 200S56 366.5 56 256zm72 20v-40c0-6.6 5.4-12 12-12h116v-67c0-10.7 12.9-16 20.5-8.5l99 99c4.7 4.7 4.7 12.3 0 17l-99 99c-7.6 7.6-20.5 2.2-20.5-8.5v-67H140c-6.6 0-12-5.4-12-12z"></path></svg> Reducing WhatsApp Usage to Mitigate Misinformation Exposure During Elections: Evidence from a Multi-Country Experiment (With Rajeshwari Majumdar, Shelley Liu, Carolina Torreblanca, and Joshua A. Tucker) *(Presentation Today!)*

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### Studying Causal Effects of WhatsApp Usage

- **Problem I:** In a context of widely adoption of certain social media applications, RCTs "treating" users with social media have several theoretical and statistical constraints. 
  
   - **Solution:** Instead of "activating", researchers have used deactivation designs to measure the short term causal effects of social media usage .midgrey[(Asimovic et al., 2022, Allcott et al., 2020, Arceneaux and Ladd 2023)]
   
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- **Problem II **: Fully deactivating WhatsApp users has ethical and empirical challenges:

- More embedded in users' personal and professional lives compared to feed-based .midgrey[((Rossini et al 2021; Gil de Zuniga et al 2021))] 
   
   - Most used for diversity of purposes other than sharing/receiving political information .midgrey[(Newman et. 2024)]
   
   - Leads to a subject pool with limited inferential value.

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## Our Design: WhatsApp Partial Deactivation

- **Multicountry Design:** selected some of the largest Global South countries having democratic elections in 2024.

- India: **General Election** Spring 2024
  - South Africa: **Presidential Election** Spring 2024
  - Brazil: **Local Election** Fall 2024

-  **Experiment:** Friction + Incentive to reduce WhatsApp usage:

- **Time Treatment:** Add time limit for WhatsApp usage per day + Limit Usage to 5min per day;
   - **Media Treatment**: Disable their automatic download of media on WhatsApp, and do not purposefully click and watch any media on WhatsApp;

- **Duration:**

- **Treatment**: Change settings and behavior for 4 weeks (one month) leading up to election in three countries
   
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- **Outcomes:** Information consumption + Attitudes

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# Experimental Design

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### Treatment Time - Intervention & Compliance

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#### Intervention: Adding Friction
<img src="output/time-limite.png" width="55%" />
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#### Compliance: Monitoring Behavior

<img src="output_mpsa/ss_ttime_actualsubject_lightmode.png" width="60%" />
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### Treatment: Media Intervention & Compliance

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#### Intervention: Adding Friction
<img src="output_mpsa/ss_tmedia_examplereal_dlpre.png" width="60%" />
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#### Compliance: Monitoring Behavior

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# Hypotheses

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## Theoretical Expectations

We posit our interventions will affect the information consumption through three distinct mechanisms:

**Direct exposure mechanism:**

- Misinformation and polarizing content frequently spreads anonymously through viral multimedia content (.midgrey[Resende et al., 2019, Garimella et al., 2018]).

- Easy to share, quasi-anonymous, no author metadata

**Enhance Attention:**

- More purposefully select type of content they engage with online, reduce lazy consumption (.midgrey[Rand et al., 2019])

**Force users to prioritize relevant engagements/one-on-one:**

- Information finds users primarily through incidental exposure on medium/large WhatsApp Groups. (.midgrey[Stroud et al., 2022, Schafer 2023])

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## Hypotheses

- Reduce exposure to (mis)information.
- Reduce exposure to online toxicity + uncivil political discussions.
- Improve accuracy discernment

- Reduce Partisan and Ethnic Affective Polarization.
- Reduce Ideological Polarization (Issue-Based).
- Reduce Candidate favorability.

- Increase Subjective Well-Being (+ Substitution Effects)

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# Results

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## Sample Characteristics

- Participants enrolled: 2426 (678 in India, 820 in South Africa, and 928 in Brazil)

- Final Sample: 2220  (653 in India, 742 in South Africa, and 825  in Brazil)

- Attrition Rate:

- On average more than 90% of completion rate across the three countries
   
   - No evidence of differential attrition. 
   
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## Compliance Results

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### Exposure to and Belief in News Headlines

- Participants are shown 8 news headlines; asked (a) whether they have seen this news before & (b) whether they think the news is true

- Four headlines are true news; four are misinformation stories

- Count how many (a) recalled & (b) accurately identified as T/F

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## Exposure of Rumors and True News

Limiting WhatsApp usage reduces exposure to misinformation & news

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## Belief Accuracy

A short-term reduction in exposure does not translate to changes in accuracy judgments

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## Uncivil content more broadly

Using several different items, we find that limiting WhatsApp usage also reduces exposure to online incivility and low-quality political discourse

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<img src="output/itt_cov_information_outcomes_right.png" width="90%" />
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## Downstream Effects: Measuring Polarization

- Participants are asked about their feelings, traits and willingness to engage with voters/members of two main parties and ethnic/religious groups in *each* country

- We also ask their feelings towards the leaders of the parties

- And their agreement across several policy issues salient in the election

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## Downstream consequences on political polarization

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Can this short-term reduction in exposure to political misinformation and toxic political content change political attitudes and reduce polarization?
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**Not quite.**
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### Downstream consequences on political polarization

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### Are these nulls effects consistent with other studies?

**Yes**. Other studies with changes in consumption, but nulls on political attitudes:

- Multimedia whatsapp deactivation in Brazil, 2022 election .midgrey[(Ventura et al., 2025)]

- Recent Facebook/Instagram deactivation experiment in US and France .midgrey[(Allcott et al., 2024, Arceunaux et al., 2024)]

- Changing Facebook feed to chronological instead of algorithmic .midgrey[(Guess et al., 2023)]

- Removing re-shares from people's Facebook News Feed .midgrey[(Nyhan et al., 2024)]

- Installing a browser to signal when people are navigating on low-quality news websites  .midgrey[(Aslett et al., 2022)]

- And experiments incentivizing participants to take a "news vacation" for two weeks .midgrey[(Wojcieszak et al., 2022)]

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### Downstream consequences on Non-Political Attitudes and Substitutes

Using several well-being items, we find that limiting WhatsApp usage makes participants feel better (happier, less anxious, less concerned about others)

**This occurs alongside increased offline activity.**

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## Key Takeaways

- WhatsApp is an important channel through which voters receive misinformation and news in major Global South democracies

- Reduced exposure to such information does not mechanically affect accuracy perceptions

- In the context of elections, WhatsApp also increases exposure to toxic content and uncivil political discussions

- ...none of this change meaningfully political attitudes (at least not within a short electoral period)

- Yet limiting WhatsApp usage **also** improves overall subjective well-being, and these effects are associated with higher time spent on offline activities.

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# Thank you!