The Effects of WhatsApp on Politics: Evidence from Deactivation Experiments

• In Event: What’s Up with WhatsApp? Social Media and Politics in the Global South

Abstract

In most advanced democracies, concerns about the spread of misinformation are usually associated with feed-based social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms also account for the vast majority of research on the topic. However, in most of the world, particularly in Global South countries, misinformation often reaches citizens through social media messaging apps, particularly WhatsApp. To fill the resulting gap in the literature, we conduct experiments intended to test the impact of reduced exposure to potential sources of misinformation on WhatsApp during the weeks leading up to elections in three major democracies: India, Mexico, and South Africa. Our experiments incentivize voters to either reduce the amount of time they spend on WhatsApp, limiting their daily usage to 10 minutes, or stop consuming multimedia content (the modal format of misinformation in these contexts) that they receive via WhatsApp.

Authors

• Tiago Augusto da Silva Ventura, Georgetown University

• Rajeshwari Majumdar, Yale University

• Shelley Liu, Duke University

• Carolina Torreblanca, University of Pennsylvania

• Joshua A. Tucker, New York University