Elliott Ash (Alesina Seminar)
Date and Time
Location
Speaker & Title
Elliott Ash (ETH Zürich), "The Joe Rogan Effect: Politicized Podcasts and the Youth Gender Voting Gap" (with Sergio Galletta, Federico Masera, Lehan Zhang)
Abstract
Online creators have become a central source of political information for young adults in recent years, and over the same period, young men have shifted toward the political right relative to young women. We examine whether these two major developments are connected by focusing on ``The Joe Rogan Experience'', the leading long-form podcast, which has a disproportionately male audience. Our identification leverages the timing and location of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) events, for which Rogan has long served as the lead commentator. In a difference-in-differences design, we find that local UFC events trigger a significant increase in Google searches and in time spent consuming Joe Rogan episodes among young men. Applying text analysis to podcast transcripts, we document a pronounced shift in Rogan’s political rhetoric: until 2020, Rogan frequently expressed support for Sanders with left-populist rhetoric; starting in 2021, his commentary became supportive of Trump with a right-populist slant. Using administrative voter files, we show that exposure to UFC events until 2020 increased Democratic voting in primaries with Sanders, while after that, exposure to UFC events increased Republican voting in primaries with Trump, with all effects concentrated among young men.
Co-sponsored by FAS and IQSS, the Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies.
All interested faculty and students are invited to attend.