The Political and Social Influence of Social Media: The Case of Facebook
Kevin Arceneaux, Sciences Po
Wednesday April 9, 10:30-12:00, Rolfe 2125

ABSTRACT: Popular discourse about social media presumes that social media platforms play an
outsized role in shaping public opinion and political behavior. The social nature of these
platforms allow people to learn about politics from a tailored set of trusted sources, making
them a potentially powerful influence, while also making them notoriously difficult to study.
Deactivation experiments, which incentivize users to forgo using social media, offer a blunt
instrument for estimating the overall impact of social media platforms. This talk will consider
what we have learned about the effects of Facebook from several deactivation experiments
conducted in the US and France. Despite its potential to shape public opinion and political
behavior, these experiments suggest that it has relatively modest effects.