Messages intended to suppress votes can be precisely delivered to particularly vulnerable and consequential groups of people via social media and keep millions of them from casting ballots, according to a new study that is the first to quantify the effect of this kind of microtargeting on voter turnout. A team led by a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison recruited more than 10,000 people across the United States—a group representative of the country’s voting population—to install an app that captured every ad they viewed for the six weeks leading up to the November election in 2016.
Social media advertising suppresses voting in targeted communities, research shows
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Past research has shown that even though science is commonly viewed as essential for effective policymaking, Democrats and Republicans cite different scientific research when creating policy—even when addressing the same topic. Now, a new Northwestern [...]
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Over the past decades, the diffusion of fake news and other deceptive content on social media platforms has become a heated topic of debate. Some past studies have explored the broad impact of online misinformation, [...]
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The security of every nation faces an increasingly severe and frequent threat: disruptions to nature. According to Bradley J. Cardinale, professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management in the Penn State College of [...]
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Consumer trust in smart technologies—like Amazon’s Alexa or Ring’s video doorbells—may rely on more than just the technology. It may also depend on a person’s political beliefs. New research from the University of New Hampshire [...]
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The relationships human societies have with animals aren’t fixed, but vary according to era, culture, territory and customs.This post was originally published on this site
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Americans are more likely to turn to authoritarian leaders when jobs are being lost due to offshoring than they are when job losses result from automation, an international research team has found. This is despite [...]
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Just as major global powers are retreating from climate finance commitments, a new empirical study provides, for the first time, evidence of a direct link between climate finance and a lower risk of resource-related conflict [...]
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Natural resources—such as fossil fuels, water, and minerals—are materials found in the environment that are essential for life and highly utilized in production. Though these resources are viewed as essential to economic development and wealth, [...]
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Millions of Americans trade cryptocurrency, but a new study from the University of Iowa finds many of them may not be very savvy when it comes to finance, acting more like meme stock traders and [...]
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Citizen participation is widely seen as key to a successful energy transition. In practice, however, it often remains more of an ideal than a reality. In her Ph.D. research at TU/e, Nikki Kluskens shows just [...]
