“We find small but meaningful variation in the persuasive effects of advertisements. In addition, we find that common theories about what makes advertising persuasive have limited and context-dependent power to predict persuasiveness. These findings indicate that experiments can compound money’s influence in elections: it is difficult to predict ex ante which ads persuade, experiments help campaigns do so…”

@Drand

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-experiments-help-campaigns-persuade-voters-evidence-from-a-large-archive-of-campaigns-own-experiments/FF5BE6ED1553475F8321F7C4209357F7

🚨New PNASNexus🚨
Reserach on misinformation & harmful language as often studied separately. Here we look at how they relate to each other, and find:
-More harmful language in tweets w low-quality news links β=0.1 & in false headlines β=0.19
-Users who share more misinformation use more harmful language in non-news tweets β=0.13

PDF: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/3/pgae111/7626151

w @mohsenmosleh

🚨New PNASNexus🚨
Reserach on misinformation & harmful language as often studied separately. Here we look at how they relate to each other, and find:
-More harmful language in tweets w low-quality news links β=0.1 & in false headlines β=0.19
-Users who share more misinformation use more harmful language in non-news tweets β=0.13

PDF: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/3/pgae111/7626151

w @mohsenmosleh

🚨New WP🚨

Field experiments with 33 million FB users & 75k Twitter users: Ads prompting users to think about accuracy reduce misinformation sharing!

Accuracy prompts offer platforms a content-neutral approach that is scalable and preservers user autonomy https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/u8anb

🚨New WP🚨

Field experiments with 33 million FB users & 75k Twitter users: Ads prompting users to think about accuracy reduce misinformation sharing!

Accuracy prompts offer platforms a content-neutral approach that is scalable and preservers user autonomy https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/u8anb

I'll be at SPSP on Friday - if anyone is interested in meeting up, send me an email or DM!

SPSP is approaching!

If any grad students or postdocs would like to chat, email me! Happy to grab a coffee.

Feel free to pass along this invite to people not on the extinct elephant site

Email located here: https://tbslaboratory.com/authors/brandtmark/

🤭

Speaking as one of the local elections communicators that felt absolutely lost in 2020 and feels only a smidge better in 2024, the work @katestarbird and @mikecaulfield and the @uwcip and Stanford's Internet Observatory was absolutely invaluable.

I have no idea what we're going to do if we don't have them next year

https://www.kuow.org/stories/kate-starbird-on-the-backlash-to-disinformation-research-online

@ashten @natalie (My goal wasn't to dodge your questions, but rather to offer to answer them directly rather than in this very-prone-to-misunderstanding abbreviated format)

@ashten @natalie So you are not interested in a conversation re qualitative aspects of how you engage in content moderation?

@atlas Thanks for your engagement! To clarify, the data we were collecting was on what news domains people on different servers share, and how toxic the language they use is etc; and then how that relates to the formal rules the server posts. But also we would LOVE to talk admins about how they actual think about / do content moderation etc (We have talked to some already, and are def interested in more!)

@nicdex @natalie @Raccoon Hi Nicholas, thanks for running TechHub. I'd love to tell you about what we're working on, what data we're collecting etc - and also to hear about your experiences as an admin etc. If you'd be up for talk, please send me an email to coordinate. Thanks!

@lena @natalie @ashten Very sorry about all this, see longer response here https://techhub.social/@Drand/111533675192775824

@stanford @natalie The email was much appreciated!! (Sorry again about the issue) https://techhub.social/@Drand/111533675192775824

@natalie
UPDATED

Hi all, apologies for this, we looked into what was happening more and turns out the issue was a link unshortening script - we didn't scrape posts, only used the official API. We didn't realize the unshortening script wad causing problems and have stopped it. In terms of why we were doing this data collection, we are doing research on how content moderation policies vary across servers, and how this can help inform the Fediverse more broadly about effective approaches to content moderation. You can get more of a sense of the kind of research we do here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k2D4zVqkSHB1M9wpXtAe3UzbeE0RPpD_E2UpaPf6Lds/edit?usp=sharing

Sorry again about causing problems for folks! (And thanks to a couple of people for emailing me to let me know about this)

🚨New WP🚨
"Pro-Climate Statements from Elon Musk can Persuade Republicans on #Climate Change"
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/v9mzk/

How can more Republicans be convinced of the importance of #climatechange?

We show tweets from Elon Musk
- a favorite of the right, but still pro-climate - sig increase climate concern/action among Reps. Musk can be a powerful climate messenger!

In recent years, Musk has embraced the political right – fighting with prominent liberals like AOC, Bernie Sanders, buying Twitter & reinstating people like Trump etc. But he has remained consistent in expressing pro-climate beliefs. This creates an opportunity!

We test whether highlighting Musks’s conservative credentials and then showing some of his pro-climate tweets can persuade Republicans on climate change.

RESULT: Yes! Seeing the tweets increases belief in and support for addressing climate change, pro-climate behavior intentions - but has no effect on attitudes towards Musk.

Quantifying the Impact of Misinformation and Vaccine-Skeptical Content on Facebook
https://psyarxiv.com/nwsqa/
(working paper Allen, Watts, @Drand, 2023

Vaccine intentions reduced far more by sensationalised mainstream media stories about vaccine risks than by stories flagged by fact-checkers as misinformation

#FactChecking

🚨Out in PNAS🚨
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301491120
"No association between numerical ability and politically motivated reasoning in a large US probability sample"

Know that influential finding that more numerate people are more politically biased?

We did NOT replicate it in a probability sample 2x larger than the original paper.

Across 5 different contentious issues, we found that people with higher numeracy gave more correct answers, regardless of whether the correct answer aligned with their politics.

We did, however, find a main effect of political alignment ( that was robust to controlling for priors) - that is, people were more likely to get the answer right when the correct answer aligned with their politics.

These results raise serious questions about the claim that motivation hijacks reasoning, while nonetheless supporting the existence of some form of motivated processing.

🚨Out in PNAS🚨
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301491120
"No association between numerical ability and politically motivated reasoning in a large US probability sample"

Know that influential finding that more numerate people are more politically biased?

We did NOT replicate it in a probability sample 2x larger than the original paper.

Across 5 different contentious issues, we found that people with higher numeracy gave more correct answers, regardless of whether the correct answer aligned with their politics.

We did, however, find a main effect of political alignment ( that was robust to controlling for priors) - that is, people were more likely to get the answer right when the correct answer aligned with their politics.

These results raise serious questions about the claim that motivation hijacks reasoning, while nonetheless supporting the existence of some form of motivated processing.