TY - RPRT A1 - Boken, Johannes A1 - Mirko, Draca A1 - Mastrorocco, Nicola A1 - Ornaghi, Arianna T1 - DP18337 The Returns to Viral Media: The Case of US Campaign Contributions N2 - Social media has changed the structure of mass communication. In this paper we explore its role in influencing political donations. Using a daily dataset of campaign contributions and Twitter activity for US Members of Congress 2019-2020, we find that attention on Twitter (as measured by likes) is positively correlated with the amount of daily small donations received. However, this is not true for everybody: the impact on campaign donations is highly skewed, indicating very concentrated returns to attention that are in line with a ‘winner-takes-all’ market. Our results are confirmed in a geography-based causal design linking member’s donations across states. Y1 - 2023 UR - https://cepr.org/publications/dp18337 PB - CEPR Press ER -