Liberini, Federica, Redoano, Michela, Russon, Antonio, Cuevas, Angel and Cuevas, Ruben (2018) Politics in the Facebook era : evidence from the 2016 US presidential elections. Working Paper. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS), 2018 (1181). (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Social media enable politicians to personalize their campaigns and target voters who may be decisive for the outcome of elections. We assess the effects of such political "micro-targeting" by exploiting variation in daily advertising prices on Facebook, collected during the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. We analyze the variation of prices across political ideologies and propose a measure for the intensity of online political campaigns. Combining this measure with information from the ANES electoral survey, we address two fundamental questions: (i) To what extent did political campaigns use social media to micro-target voters? (ii) How large was the effect, if any, on voters who were heavily exposed to campaigning on social media? We find that online political campaigns targeted on users' gender, geographic location, and political ideology had a signicant eect in persuading undecided voters to support Mr Trump, and in persuading Republican supporters to turn out on polling day. Moreover the effect of micro-targeting on Facebook was strongest among users without university or college-level education.

Item Type:	Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States)
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Social media -- Political aspects -- United States, Mass media -- Political aspects -- United States, Facebook (Electronic resource), Political campaigns -- United States, Internet in political campaigns -- United States, Elections -- Economic aspects
Series Name:	Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS)
Publisher:	University of Warwick. Department of Economics
Place of Publication:	Coventry, UK
ISSN:	0083-7350
Official Date:	October 2018
Dates:	Date Event October 2018 Available
Volume:	2018
Number:	1181
Number of Pages:	70
Institution:	University of Warwick
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access (Creative Commons)
Description:	This paper also appears as CAGE discussion paper 389
Date of first compliant deposit:	1 November 2018
Date of first compliant Open Access:	1 November 2018

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