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Atwell, Paul and Noah L. Nathan. 2022. "Channels for Influence or Maps of Behavior? A Field Experiment on Social Networks and Cooperation." American Journal of Political Science, 66(3): 696-713.
Communities in developing countries often must cooperate to self‐provide or co‐produce local public goods. Many expect that community social networks facilitate this cooperation, but few studies directly observe real‐life networks in these settings. We collect detailed social network data in rural Northern Ghana to explore how social positions and proximity to community leaders predict donations to a local public good. We then implement a field experiment manipulating participants' opportunity to communicate and apply social pressure before donating. We find clear evidence that locations in community social networks predict cooperative behavior, but no evidence that communication improves coordination or cooperation, in contrast to common theoretical expectations and laboratory findings. Our results show that evolved, real‐life social networks serve as a mapping of community members' already‐engrained behaviors, not only as an active technology through which social influence propagates to solve collective action problems.
Supported by the Center for Political Studies (Roy Pierce Scholarship) and the International Policy Center at the Ford School of Public Policy
Armand, Alex, Paul Atwell, and Joseph F. Gomes. 2020. "The Reach of Radio: Ending Civil Conflict through Rebel Demobilization." American Economic Review, 110 (5): 1395-1429.
We examine the role of FM radio in mitigating violent conflict. We collect original data on radio broadcasts encouraging defections during the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency. This constitutes the first quantitative evaluation of an active counterinsurgency policy that encourages defections through radio messages. Exploiting random topography-driven variation in radio coverage along with panel variation at the grid-cell level, we identify the causal effect of messaging on violence. Broadcasting defection messages increases defections and reduces fatalities, violence against civilians, and clashes with security forces. Income shocks have opposing effects on both the conflict and the effectiveness of messaging.
Awarded 2019 Eckstein Prize for inter-disciplinary research.
Supported by the Ramón Areces Foundation (Madrid).
Mayors, Messages and Misinformation. (R&R: Nature) (Field Exp PAP) (Survey Exp. PAP)
With: Simon Chauchard (UC3M) and Fernando Mello (UC3M)
Regulatory measures penalizing sharers of misinformation are increasingly common around the world. We study their impacts in a field experiment during the 2024 mayoral elections in Brazil with the universe of re-contesting mayoral candidates. Those in the treatment condition received text messages during the campaign informing them of recently strengthened judicial penalties and enforcement around posting misinformation. Results suggest rules and sanctions imposed by electoral courts (and knowledge thereof) led candidates to produce fewer posts containing misinformation, without reducing their overall volume of posting. A contemporaneous survey-experiment using the same messages shows these effects stem as much from messages emphasizing social penalties as from messages emphasizing legal penalties in a similar pool of candidates.. We conclude that judicial responses to misinformation can improve the quality of campaigns, and generate only limited negative secondary effects.
Can Political Elites Do Better? An Experimental Test of Sanctions on Candidates’ Interest in False Content (Survey Exp. PAP)
With: Simon Chauchard (UC3M) and Fernando Mello (UC3M)
Can legal interventions deter political elites from spreading misinformation? We study what drives (and may prevent) candidates for public office to propagate false content in their social media presence. In a survey experiment conducted during an active campaign in Brazil we randomized exposure to messages noting the potential costs of posting misinformation, including Brazil's uniquely robust judicial penalties for doing so. We find notable improvements candidates' engagement with false content, but also find reduced interest in sharing true content compared to a control condition. This result alongside a series of rich analyses indicate that the supply of false content shared by elites can be attributed in part to misaligned incentives rather than the simple absence of correct priors.
Partisan Processing: How partisan identities affect susceptibility to misinformation in Ghana
With: Simon Chauchard (UC3M)
While online misinformation is a threat to developing democracies, its underlying drivers remain poorly understood. Conventional wisdom frequently attributes this vulnerability to voter naivety, assuming citizens in these regions are uniquely uncritical or underresourced information consumers. We challenge this narrative by examining the role of affective partisanship and associated motivated reasoning. Through a survey in Ghana (N = 2,198), we examine how partisan identities shape the evaluation of true and false news. Our results reveal that misinformation uptake is heavily driven by motivated reasoning: partisans are far more likely to believe false claims that favor their party, yet show no such bias toward non-partisan information. Additionally, exploratory analysis indicates that incumbent supporters, those most likely to have strong affective ties—are uniquely vulnerable. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that partisan motivated reasoning is alive and well in emerging democracies, suggesting scholars and policy makers should engage demand-side issues alongside current digital literacy efforts.
Broadcasting Equality: Media Narratives and the Rise of Civil Rights. (Under review: Review of Economic Studies)
With: A. Armand (Nova Business), J. Gomes and Y. Schenk (UC Louvain), and G. Musillo (Tilburg)
This paper investigates the role of mass media in shaping racial tolerance and advancing civil rights in the post-WWII United States. We study the first attempt in the history of mass media to use a radio broadcast targeted at children to promote an inclusive American society. In 1946, amid racial divisions, the popular radio series \textit{The Adventures of Superman} launched \textit{Operation Intolerance}, a sequence of new episodes promoting equality, rejecting racial discrimination, and exposing the KKK's bigotry. Using digitized historical data on U.S. radio stations and state-of-the-art radio propagation models, we compute geographic exposure to the broadcasts. Exploiting exogenous exposure to the broadcasts, we employ a cohort study design to analyze individual-level data from 1964 to 1980--a crucial period for civil rights activism and legislation in the United States. We find lasting impacts on those exposed as children, including increased support for civil rights, improved interracial relations, and more progressive political attitudes. These effects translate into greater alignment with the Civil Rights Movement, evidenced by increased support for protests and diminished institutional trust, and further manifested by reduced participation in the Vietnam War. Additionally, county-level panel data illustrate how areas covered by the broadcast in 1946 evolve towards less segregationist attitudes, a lower presence of the KKK, and an increase in civil rights activism and prominence in discourse.
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