SOME
Financiado
Social Media: Measuring Effects and Mitigating Downsides
Social media was initially expected to generate widespread improvements in individual well-being and to have positive externalities in the political domain. Such optimistic expectations soon gave way to a host of concerns about po...
Social media was initially expected to generate widespread improvements in individual well-being and to have positive externalities in the political domain. Such optimistic expectations soon gave way to a host of concerns about possible negative effects of social media. At the societal level, many started worrying that social media might exacerbate political polarization and propagate misinformation. At the level of individual users, many became concerned that social media might have detrimental effects on mental health, especially among the youth.
This research proposal has two major goals: first, to fill critical gaps in our knowledge of the causal effects of social media on users and society; second, to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at mitigating the downsides of social media. On the political front, I will deploy a novel empirical strategy to investigate the impact of social media on political engagement and conduct a large-scale field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at increasing the quality and reducing the partisanship of the news consumed on social media. On the users’ front, I will conduct two large-scale field experiments: one aimed at evaluating the impact of an intervention encouraging parents to delay the acquisition of a smartphone for their children on outcomes related to child development; the other aimed at evaluating whether tweaks to the social media environment can mitigate the negative effects of social media on mental health.
The overarching goal of this research project is to generate new scientific knowledge on the use and impact of social media, to highlight potential areas of policy intervention, and to evaluate ecologically valid and scalable remedies to the downsides of social media. The unique blend of cutting-edge causal inference techniques from observational data and large-scale field experiments will generate insights that can benefit researchers, users, and policymakers alike.
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Duración del proyecto: 60 meses
Fecha Inicio: 2023-11-08
Fecha Fin: 2028-11-30
Fecha Fin: 2028-11-30
Línea de financiación: concedida
El organismo HORIZON EUROPE notifico la concesión del proyecto el día 2023-11-08
Línea de financiación objetivo
El proyecto se financió a través de la siguiente ayuda:
ERC-2023-STG:
ERC STARTING GRANTS
Cerrada
hace 2 años
Presupuesto
El presupuesto total del proyecto asciende a
1M€
Líder del proyecto
UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI
No se ha especificado una descripción o un objeto social para esta compañía.
Perfil tecnológico
TRL
4-5
Perfil tecnológico
TRL
4-5