Does Social Media Make Us Better or Worse Off? Evidence From the 2016 and 2018 Elections.

Does Social Media Make Us Better or Worse Off? Evidence From the 2016 and 2018 Elections.

Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Matthew Gentzkow, and Chuan Yu

When
Friday December 7, 2018
10:00 – 11:30 AM

Where
City Club of Washington
555 13th Street, NW
Boardroom
Washington, DC 20004

Social media platforms are being accused of being at the root of a host of social ills: fake news, depression, political polarization, addiction, and other maladies. To test these assertions, Allcott and his team has been tracking the diffusion of misinformation on social media. Recently, they ran a large-scale randomized experiment in which we paid Facebook users to deactivate their accounts in the four weeks before the 2018 midterm elections. Professor Allcott will present results from these studies and other related work.

 

Event Contact: Ashley Benjamin, 202-828-4405, [email protected]

The Technology Policy Institute

The Technology Policy Institute is a non-profit research and educational organization that focuses on the economics of innovation, technological change, and related regulation in the United States and around the world. More information is available at www.techpolicyinstitute.org/.

 

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