Carlos Velasco Rivera (Workshop in Applied Statistics)

Today's Speaker

Carlos Velasco Rivera (Netflix), "On-Platform Experimental Research on Facebook and Instagram in the 2020 Election"

Abstract

We will discuss a groundbreaking collaboration among over two dozen independent (that is, not paid by Meta) academics and a team of Meta researchers. Since early 2020, this group has worked together to evaluate the role of Facebook and Instagram in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The collaboration has, as of now, resulted in over a dozen pre-registered (observational and experimental) designs for academic research papers. In this presentation, we will focus on the experimental interventions that were designed to test the causal impact of Facebook and Instagram on all of the project’s key variables of inquiry: political participation; political polarization; knowledge and misperceptions; and beliefs about democratic norms. The project included multiple experiments, including full deactivation of platform use as well as various changes to the way in which participants encountered information on the platform.

The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers.

More information is available at the Gov 3009 website: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009

All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.