NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics

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We work to strengthen democracy by conducting rigorous research, advancing evidence-based public policy, and training the next generation of scholars. https://csmapnyu.org/links

Marginal Treatment Effects of WhatsApp Multimedia Deactivation on Belief Accuracy conditional on using WhatsApp to receive and share information about politics
Treatment effects of WhatsApp Multimedia Deactivation on False Rumors Accuracy and True News Accuracy Judgments
Treatment effects of WhatsApp Multimedia Deactivation on self-reported exposure to false rumors and true news stories.
Overview of the WhatsApp Multimedia Deactivation Experiment
Abstract: In most advanced democracies, concerns about the spread of misinformation are typically associated with feed-based social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms also account for the vast majority of research on the topic. However, in most of the world, particularly in Global South countries, misinformation often reaches citizens through social media messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp. To fill the resulting gap in the literature, we conducted a multimedia deactivation experiment to test the impact of reducing exposure to potential sources of misinformation on WhatsApp during the weeks leading up to the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil. We find that this intervention significantly reduced participants’ recall of false rumors circulating widely during the election. However, consistent with theories of mass media minimal effects, a short-term change in the information environment did not lead to significant changes in belief accuracy, political polarization, or well-being.
1) State lawmakers listen to their constituents. Legislators consistently respond to the policy concerns of the general public in their state, particularly partisan constituents who are deeply engaged in state politics. 2) Congressional influence is also strong. Members of Congress exert top-down influence on state legislators, who frequently shift their attention to issues being discussed at the national level. 3) State media matters. While its influence is more moderate, local media outlets help shape state lawmakers’ attention to policy issues. 4) But presidents and national media don’t necessarily. Interestingly, we did not find that either Presidents Donald Trump or Joe Biden, nor national media outlets such as CNN and Fox News, have a substantial impact on state legislators’ policy focus.
Title: Bottom Up? Top Down? Determinants ofIssue-Attention in State Politics Abstract: Who shapes the issue-attention cycle of state legislators? Although state governments make critical policy decisions, data and methodological constraints have limited re-searchers’ ability to study state-level agenda setting. For this paper, we collect more than 122 million Twitter messages sent by state and national actors in 2018 and 2021.We then employ supervised machine learning and time series techniques to study how the issue-attention of state lawmakers evolves vis-`a-vis various local- and national-level actors. Our findings suggest that state legislators operate at the confluence of national and local influences. In line with arguments highlighting the nationalization of state politics, we find that state legislators are consistently responsive to policy debates among members of Congress. However, despite growing nationalization concerns, we also find strong evidence of issue responsiveness by legislators to members of the public in their states and moderate responsiveness to regional media sources.
An infographic with five headshots of speakers for an October 21st virtual event on AI threats to the 2024 election.
An infographic with five headshots of speakers for an October 9th virtual event on rebuilding trust in the information environment.