Overview
The prominence and importance of social media in many relevant economic domains has increased over the past decade, leading to a wide range of economic and policy questions that are continually evolving and cross disciplinary boundaries. These questions arise from the complicated, economic interactions between the agents on these platforms — content producers, consumers, advertisers, and the platforms themselves. This workshop aims to bring together researchers focusing on empirical topics in this area of research and with a particular focus on policy issues arising from the economic aspects of these platforms.
Agenda
Saturday July 22
| 8:30 – 9:00 |
Breakfast / Registration |
| 9:00 – 10:30 |
Consumption of Content
The Long-term Effects of Online Social Network Access (Luis Armona, Michael Bailey) Production and Consumption of Social Media (Apostolos Filippas, John Horton, Elliot Lipnowski) |
| 10:30 – 11:00 |
Coffee Break |
| 11:00 – 12:30 |
Distribution of Content
Estimating the Value of Offsite Data to Advertisers on Meta (Nils Wernerfelt, Anna Tuchman, Brad Shapiro, Robert Moakler) Automating Automaticity: How the Context of Human Choice Affects the Extent of Algorithmic Bias (Amanda Y. Agan, Diag Davenport, Jens Ludwig, Sendhil Mullainathan)
|
| 12:30 – 13:30 |
Lunch |
| 13:30 – 14:30 |
Keynote |
| 14:30 – 15:30 |
Social Media Platforms and their Regulation
Mobile Internet and Political Polarization (Nikita Melnikov) Regulation of Social Media and the Evolution of content: a cross-platform analysis (Marina Rizzi) Can Facebook Ads prevent Malaria? Two field experiments in India (Dante Donati, Victor Orozco, Nandan Rao) The role of advertisers and platforms in monetizing misinformation: Descriptive and experimental evidence (Wajeeha Ahmad, Chuck Eesely, Ananya Sen, Erik Brynjolfsson) |
| 15:30 – 16:00 |
Coffee Break |
| 16:00 – 17:15 |
The Facebook / Instagram 2020 Election Project Moderator: Ro’ee Levy Presenters: Matthew Gentzkow,Sandra Gonzalez-Baillon, David Lazer, Winter Mason, Talia Stroud |
| 17:15 – 18:15 |
Roundtable: Implications for Platforms and Policy Moderator: Solomon Messing Panelists: Tom Cunningham, Dean Eckles, Matthew Gentzkow, Pinar Yildirim |
| 19:00 |
Dinner (by invitation only) |
Sunday July 23
| 8:30 – 9:00 |
Breakfast / Registration |
| 9:00 – 10:30 |
Production of Content
The Effects of Online Content Moderation: Evidence from President Trump’s
Account Deletion (Karsten Müller, Carlo Schwarz) Emotion- versus Reasoning-based Drivers of Misinformation Sharing: A field
experiment using text message courses in Kenya (Susan Athey, Matias
Cersosim, Kristine Koutout, Zelin Li) |
| 10:30 – 11:30 |
Political Effects of Social Media
Can chants in the street change politics’ tune? Evidence from the 15M movement in Spain (Annalí Casanueva) The Effect of Social Media on Voters: Experimental Evidence from an Indian Election (Kevin Carney) Reducing Prejudice and Support for Religious Nationalism Through Conversations on WhatsApp (Rajeshwari Majumdar, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker) Virtual Windows Through Glass Walls: Digitization for Mobility-Constrained Female Entrepreneurs (Layane Alhorr) |
| 11:30 – 12:30 |
Coffee and Snacks |
| 12:00 – 13:30 |
Behavior on Social Media
Counterspeech encouraging empathy can reduce hate speech and its amplification on social media (Gloria Gennaro, et al.)
Do Virtue Signals Signal Virtue? (Deivis Angeli, Matt Lowe, The Village Team)
|
| 13:30 |
Concluding Remarks |
Keynote speaker:
Leonardo Bursztyn (University of Chicago)
Scientific Committee:
Guy Aridor (Northwestern University), Ruben Enikolopov (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Shane Greenstein (Harvard), Rafael Jiménez (SSRC/Bocconi University), Horacio Larreguy (ITAM), Ro’ee Levy (Tel Aviv University), Maria Petrova (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Lena Song (Columbia University/University of Illinois), Talia Stroud (The University of Texas at Austin), Joshua Tucker (New York University), Pinar Yildirim (University of Pennsylvania), and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (Paris School of Economics).
Organizing Committee:
Guy Aridor (Northwestern University), Rafael Jiménez (SSRC/Bocconi University), Ro’ee Levy (Tel Aviv University), and Lena Song (Columbia University/University of Illinois).
Conference Venue:
Hemmerdinger Hall, Silver Center
New York University
Contact: social-media-conference@ssrc.org