TY - JOUR A1 - Guess, Andrew M. A1 - Barberá, Pablo A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Yang, JungHwan ED - Bail, Christopher Andrew T1 - The consequences of online partisan media JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences N2 - What role do ideologically extreme media play in the polarization of society? Here we report results from a randomized longitudinal field experiment embedded in a nationally representative online panel survey (N = 1,037) in which participants were incentivized to change their browser default settings and social media following patterns, boosting the likelihood of encountering news with either a left-leaning (HuffPost) or right-leaning (Fox News) slant during the 2018 US midterm election campaign. Data on ≈ 19 million web visits by respondents indicate that resulting changes in news consumption persisted for at least 8 wk. Greater exposure to partisan news can cause immediate but short-lived increases in website visits and knowledge of recent events. After adjusting for multiple comparisons, however, we find little evidence of a direct impact on opinions or affect. Still, results from later survey waves suggest that both treatments produce a lasting and meaningful decrease in trust in the mainstream media up to 1 y later. Consistent with the minimal-effects tradition, direct consequences of online partisan media are limited, although our findings raise questions about the possibility of subtle, cumulative dynamics. The combination of experimentation and computational social science techniques illustrates a powerful approach for studying the long-term consequences of exposure to partisan news. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2013464118 VL - 118 IS - 14 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - BarberÁ, Pablo A1 - Guess, Andrew M. A1 - Yang, JungHwan T1 - Do Online Voter Guides Empower Citizens? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Digital Trace Data JF - Public Opinion Quarterly N2 - Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), which provide citizens with information on the party that best represents their political preferences, are often cited as evidence of the empowering capabilities of digital tools. Aside from the informational benefits of these voter guides, observational studies have suggested a strong effect on political participation and vote choice. However, existing impact evaluations have been limited by a reliance on convenience samples, lack of random assignment, or both. This raises questions about self-selection and the precise mechanisms underlying how voters learn about politics. Here, we provide evidence from a field experiment with survey outcomes conducted with a sample of over 1,000 German citizens in the 2017 federal election campaign. Using linked panel survey and digital trace data combined with a randomized encouragement to complete a VAA, we assess respondents’ compliance with treatment and observe how the use of this tool affects political behavior, attitudes, media consumption, political knowledge, and even social media activity. Our findings reveal that the overwhelming consensus in favor of positive effects on turnout and vote choice should be treated with caution, as we find no such effects. Rather, the actual virtue of VAAs in a complex online information environment lies in increasing knowledge about parties’ positions on issues—exactly the kind of information these tools were designed to provide. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfaa037 VL - 84 IS - 3 SP - 675 EP - 698 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Ramirez-Ruiz, Sebastian A1 - Barberá, Pablo A1 - Guess, Andrew M. A1 - Yang, JungHwan T1 - Who’s cheating on your survey? A detection approach with digital trace data JF - Political Science Research and Methods N2 - In this note, we provide direct evidence of cheating in online assessments of political knowledge. We combine survey responses with web tracking data of a German and a US online panel to assess whether people turn to external sources for answers. We observe item-level prevalence rates of cheating that range from 0 to 12 percent depending on question type and difficulty, and find that 23 percent of respondents engage in cheating at least once across waves. In the US panel, which employed a commitment pledge, we observe cheating behavior among less than 1 percent of respondents. We find robust respondent- and item-level characteristics associated with cheating. However, item-level instances of cheating are rare events; as such, they are difficult to predict and correct for without tracking data. Even so, our analyses comparing naive and cheating-corrected measures of political knowledge provide evidence that cheating does not substantially distort inferences. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2022.42 SP - 1 EP - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Allcott, Hunt A1 - Gentzkow, Matthew A1 - Mason, Winter A1 - Wilkins, Arjun A1 - Barberá, Pablo A1 - Brown, Taylor A1 - Cisneros, Juan Carlos A1 - Crespo-Tenorio, Adriana A1 - Dimmery, Drew A1 - Freelon, Deen A1 - González-Bailón, Sandra A1 - Guess, Andrew M. A1 - Kim, Young Mie A1 - Lazer, David A1 - Malhotra, Neil A1 - Moehler, Devra A1 - Nair-Desai, Sameer A1 - Nait El Barj, Houda A1 - Nyhan, Brendan A1 - Paixao de Queiroz, Ana Carolina A1 - Pan, Jennifer A1 - Settle, Jaime A1 - Thorson, Emily A1 - Tromble, Rebekah A1 - Velasco Rivera, Carlos A1 - Wittenbrink, Benjamin A1 - Wojcieszak, Magdalena A1 - Zahedian, Saam A1 - Franco, Annie A1 - Kiewiet de Jonge, Chad A1 - Stroud, Natalie Jomini A1 - Tucker, Joshua A. T1 - The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences N2 - We study the effect of Facebook and Instagram access on political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior by randomizing a subset of 19,857 Facebook users and 15,585 Instagram users to deactivate their accounts for 6 wk before the 2020 U.S. election. We report four key findings. First, both Facebook and Instagram deactivation reduced an index of political participation (driven mainly by reduced participation online). Second, Facebook deactivation had no significant effect on an index of knowledge, but secondary analyses suggest that it reduced knowledge of general news while possibly also decreasing belief in misinformation circulating online. Third, Facebook deactivation may have reduced self-reported net votes for Trump, though this effect does not meet our preregistered significance threshold. Finally, the effects of both Facebook and Instagram deactivation on affective and issue polarization, perceived legitimacy of the election, candidate favorability, and voter turnout were all precisely estimated and close to zero. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2321584121 VL - 121 IS - 21 ER -