Public Opinion
Social media exposes us to an incredible amount of information — from news stories to political messaging to pop culture. CSMaP studies how this information shapes public opinion and affects people’s political attitudes and beliefs.
Academic Research
-
Journal Article
Digital Town Square? Nextdoor's Offline Contexts and Online Discourse
Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 2024
There is scant quantitative research describing Nextdoor, the world's largest and most important hyperlocal social media network. Due to its localized structure, Nextdoor data are notoriously difficult to collect and work with. We build multiple datasets that allow us to generate descriptive analyses of the platform's offline contexts and online content. We first create a comprehensive dataset of all Nextdoor neighborhoods joined with U.S. Census data, which we analyze at the community-level (block-group). Our findings suggests that Nextdoor is primarily used in communities where the populations are whiter, more educated, more likely to own a home, and with higher levels of average income, potentially impacting the platform's ability to create new opportunities for social capital formation and citizen engagement. At the same time, Nextdoor neighborhoods are more likely to have active government agency accounts---and law enforcement agencies in particular---where offline communities are more urban, have larger nonwhite populations, greater income inequality, and higher average home values. We then build a convenience sample of 30 Nextdoor neighborhoods, for which we collect daily posts and comments appearing in the feed (115,716 posts and 163,903 comments), as well as associated metadata. Among the accounts for which we collected posts and comments, posts seeking or offering services were the most frequent, while those reporting potentially suspicious people or activities received the highest average number of comments. Taken together, our study describes the ecosystem of and discussion on Nextdoor, as well as introduces data for quantitatively studying the platform.
-
Journal Article
The Effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 Election: A Deactivation Experiment
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024
We study the effect of Facebook and Instagram access on political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior by randomizing a subset of 19,857 Facebook users and 15,585 Instagram users to deactivate their accounts for 6 wk before the 2020 U.S. election. We report four key findings. First, both Facebook and Instagram deactivation reduced an index of political participation (driven mainly by reduced participation online). Second, Facebook deactivation had no significant effect on an index of knowledge, but secondary analyses suggest that it reduced knowledge of general news while possibly also decreasing belief in misinformation circulating online. Third, Facebook deactivation may have reduced self-reported net votes for Trump, though this effect does not meet our preregistered significance threshold. Finally, the effects of both Facebook and Instagram deactivation on affective and issue polarization, perceived legitimacy of the election, candidate favorability, and voter turnout were all precisely estimated and close to zero.
Reports & Analysis
-
Analysis
How Americans’ Confidence in Technology Firms has Dropped
Results from the American Institutional Confidence poll's second wave show that the public's confidence in technology, and tech companies, has markedly decreased over the past five years.
June 14, 2023
-
Analysis
Which Republicans Are Most Likely to Think the Election Was Stolen?
Those who dislike Democrats and don’t mind white nationalists. That includes plenty of Republicans with college educations.
January 19, 2021
News & Commentary
-
News
Where Do Nextdoor Communities Exist — And What Do These Communities Talk About?
Study provides new data about Nextdoor, America’s most popular hyperlocal platform
May 29, 2024
-
News
Jennifer Allen and Christopher Barrie to Join CSMaP and NYU Faculty
At CSMaP, Allen and Barrie will serve as core faculty members leading research projects on urgent topics related to digital media and democracy.
May 1, 2024