Семинар "Политическая экономика": Anton Sobolev (Yale University) о влиянии российских государственных служащих на онлайн-поведение пользователей социальных сетей.

На семинаре "Политическая экономика" Anton Sobolev (Yale University) рассказал о том, как влияют вмешательства российских государственных служащих на онлайн-поведение пользователей социальных сетей.

Тема: How Pro-Government “Trolls” Influence Online Conversations in Russia

Аннотация:

In a non-democracy, the regime can censor and manipulate social media for its own goals. This paper establishes the causal effect of the covert interventions of Russian government employees on the online behavior of social media users and unpacks the technology behind the Russian government propaganda. I evaluate the impact of such interventions in online conversations by combining matching techniques with the difference-in-differences approach on a novel database covering the activity of the state-sponsored online propagandists. I find that the Russian troll activity was significantly more successful in diverting online discussions away from politically sensitive topics or stopping them altogetherthan in promoting a pro-government agenda. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study that documents the causal effect of trolls' interventions on the online behavior of social media users.