Experiments

#164: Political Persuasion and the Effects of Targeted Social Media Ads, with Dr. Alexander Coppock

September 23, 2023 Academics

Dr. Alexander Coppock, Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University, shares his research on measuring the political effects of persuasive information. We discuss how political persuasion affects voters holding different viewpoints, the durability of these effects over time, and how much political ads seem to affect voters’ political attitudes. 

Here are Dr. Coppock’s research studies discussed in the episode: 

 

Persuasion in Parallel: How Information Changes Minds about Politics (2022)

The small effects of political advertising are small regardless of context, message, sender, or receiver (2020)

Does digital advertising affect vote choice? Evidence from a randomized field experiment (2022)

The impact of digital advertising on turnout during the 2020 US presidential election (Pre-print, 2022)

#139: Political Leader Evaluations on Instagram and Emotions in Covid Crisis Communication, with Dr. Jenny Lindholm

February 27, 2022 Academics

Dr. Jenny Lindholm, University Teacher and Researcher in Political Science, Media, and Communication at Åbo Akademi University, discusses her research on visual political communication. First, we break down Dr. Lindholm’s eye-tracking experiment on how party leaders’ Instagram photos affect viewers’ trait perceptions of leaders. The focus is on where viewers of these images give their visual attention, and whether that differs across public versus private photos as well as the gender of party leaders. Then, we discuss another study focusing on the emotion communication of the Finnish Prime Minister during coronavirus crisis communication in press conferences. 

 

Here are the two studies we discuss in the episode:

 

See Me, Like Me! Exploring Viewers’ Visual Attention to and Trait Perceptions of Party Leaders on Instagram (2021)

Emotionell räddning? Visuell kriskommunikation under coronakrisens inledande skede – fallet Finland (2021)

#132: Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, with Prof. Chris Bail

September 26, 2021 Academics

Professor Chris Bail, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Duke University, discusses his latest book Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing. Professor Bail shares findings from three studies on political polarization covering field-experiments, qualitative interviews, and lab experiments. We discuss how social media contributes to a distorted reality in how extremists and moderates discuss politics online, and how this prism fosters a sense false polarization. We also chat about measures that individuals and social media platforms could take to reduce online political polarization. 

Here are supplementary links to two studies discussed in the episode: 

Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media can Increase Political Polarization (2019)

Political Sectarianism in America (2020)

#107: Persuasion Effects of Psychometric Targeting and Chatbots, with Dr. Brahim Zarouali

May 31, 2020 Academics

Dr. Brahim Zarouali, Assistant Professor in Persuasive Communication at the University of Amsterdam, discusses his research on social media political ads and their effectiveness on different personality types (introverts and extroverts). We break down the findings from two experiments, which try and replicate the psychometric targeting techniques of firms like Cambridge Analytica  by appealing to users’ psychological traits and emotions. We also discuss the de-polarization potential of chatbots, based on a study Dr. Zarouali conducted that presents participants with pro- or anti-attitudinal news on immigration. 

#93: Political Self-Expression on Social Media, with Dr. Dan Lane

October 26, 2019 Academics

Dr. Dan Lane, Assistant Professor of Communication at UC Santa Barbara, guests to discuss his research on how political self-expression influences citizens’ perceptions of their political selves as citizens. We also talk about how certain design features of social media seem to affect youth political expression, and how different acts of self-expression can influence political self concepts to varying degrees.

Here are the three studies we discussed in the episode:

  1. Social Media Expression and the Political Self
  2. Civic Laboratories: Youth Political Expression in Anonymous, Ephemeral, Geo-Bounded Social Media
  3. Social Media Design for Youth Political Expression: Testing the Roles of Identifiability and Geo-boundedness