🚨 pub day! we have a new paper out at
@apsrjournal
on misinformation and vigilantism
we show that debunking misinfo not only changes misinformed beliefs, but also reduces support for extra-judicial violence in both india & pakistan
w
@nilosiddiqui
&
@simonchauchard
Just published on APSR First View: "Misinformation and Support for Vigilantism: An Experiment in India and Pakistan" by Sumitra Badrinathan, Simon Chauchard, and Niloufer Siddiqui.
opposition leaders jailed, people coerced into dropping out of races, opposition bank accounts frozen, captured media, institutional decay, religious and social unrest.
and still the BJP does not have a mandate. what a day for INDIA!
Today during fieldwork we asked respondents (in 18 houses) to name the current PM. Everyone said Modi.
Then asked for his full name. 14 out of 18 said Nirav.
Bihar is incredible.
hard to believe this is real: my first ever solo authored paper was just accepted to
@apsrjournal
🥲
during the 2019 general elections in India when political misinformation was rife, I designed a field experiment to combat it 🧵1/
some personal news: so happy to share that i’m joining
@AmericanU
@AU_SIS
as an assistant professor in political science in fall ‘22! very excited to move back to the east coast and be a part of this incredible community 🥲
so happy that my paper using a field experiment to fight misinformation in india is out at
@apsrjournal
!
never imagined that i would get a null effects paper published, let alone at the APSR, so this feels truly surreal.
full paper:
🚨New Working Paper Alert! 🚨
An Experiment on Fact-checking WhatsApp Rumors in India
w/
@SimonChauchard
and
@d_j_flynn
We introduce a user-driven correction intervention and show w/ over 5k online users that it decreases belief in fake news. 🧵⬇️
1/
I zoom-defended my dissertation today and happy to share that I’m moving to Oxford for a postdoc
@risj_oxford
! Feeling so excited, grateful, and humbled right now.
I thought the Trevor Noah joke was pretty bad but if we’re giving him so much shit for it can we also criticize the maker of a certain joke on dyslexia with the same vigor?
some good news: i’m so honored to receive the
@APSAtweets
political communication section’s Paul Lazarsfeld best paper award for my
@apsrjournal
paper on misinformation in India
my deep gratitude to committee chair Sean Richey, and
@QueenCityProf
,
@alcivelasq
,
@poli_com
:)
🚨 excited to share our new pub out at the International Journal of Press/Politics w
@SimonChauchard
!
with over 5000 respondents in India, we show that simple rebuttals like "i don't think that's true, bro" can make people less vulnerable to misinfo despite partisan ties
does misinformation research from western countries generalize to the global south? how should scholars think about developing countries when studying misinfo?
in a new article w
@SimonChauchard
we discuss this question and provide pointers for future research. key table:
campuses and politicians are busy curtailing students’ right to free speech and protest but nobody will bat an eye if you churn out garbage like this
imagine this headline about other communities/groups in the US. shame on
@WSJopinion
so happy to share that our team was awarded a large grant from the
@ssrc_org
mercury project (w/
@NSF
and
@RockefellerFdn
)
our project (with
@SimonChauchard
&
@NeelanjanSircar
) will evaluate a year long anti-misinformation RCT in indian schools. excited to kick this off soon 🥳
the times, india’s leading daily paper, just published a straight up fake story based on a fake tweet. others followed
i hope misinformation researchers use this to understand why “discernment” and “trust in good sources” are imperfect survey measures in countries like india
Thrilled to share new findings from the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey, joint w/ Devesh Kapur and
@MilanV
!
This time we look at how Indian Americans view India. Summarizing some key findings below on politics and policy attitudes of Indian Americans 👇🧵
🚨 Now forthcoming at the APSR:
We
@KhariBiskut
@NiloSiddiqui
& myself explore a grim and topical question.
We show that misinformation drives support for vigilantism in India/Pakistan, but that correcting rumors *can* change these downstream effects of misinformation.
1/2
lots of misinformation on Indian whatsapp this past week:
— biden caused the second wave
— kumbh mela images photoshopped
— western media manufacturing high death rates
the govt has a clear misinfo supply side advantage. this is a problem for electoral accountability.
last week we officially signed an MOU with
@brlps_jeevika
to launch the Bihar Information and Media Literacy Initiative:
a grassroots, long-term, educational RCT in *600* villages across the state of bihar to counter health misinformation among school children 📚📝
adding to the chorus of folks having an impossible time getting a visa for
#apsa2022
.
the mental effort, time and $$ it takes for global south passport holders to do even one of these apps (but especially canada) is such a burden—and only to learn that you can’t go after all.
So excited to share results from the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS), joint w/
@MilanV
& Devesh Kapur
We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 936 Indian American citizens ahead of the 2020 election
Key findings below👇🧵
🚨Excited to share new findings from the
@risj_oxford
Trust in News project, using survey data in four countries including India!
We look at trust in news sources, who is less trusting and why, and how politics affects media trust. Key findings from the Indian sample below 👇🧵
We asked respondents about trust in specific news brands. Republic TV receives the highest levels of distrust (14%); Republic also emerges as one of the most polarizing brands, trusted by 72% of BJP supporters but only 50% of all others
🚨 we’re hiring! the dept of politics, gov & econ at
@AU_SIS
@AmericanU
is looking for a TT assistant prof in political economy / CP w quant focus. join us in dc!
i’m on the committee & happy to answer Qs.
note deadline 9/15
#psjminfo
#poliscijobs
i’m coming up on ONE YEAR since i applied for a canadian visa for apsa 22. the conference came and went last year, still no visa.
we study polisci & IR yet our discipline couldn’t be more ignorant about immigration nightmares a majority of the world faces. it’s appalling.
I'm not sure if ISA is considering some kind of credit for next year's registration or reimbursement for folks who're losing money because of Canada's visa policy/inefficiencies etc.?
This hits graduate students hard especially.
@IsaNet
@DeborahAvant1
@ProfKMcNamara
From Penn’s international office.
How would international students who live *off campus* leaving fix the problem? Are American students living off campus immune to the virus? I’m so livid
apropos of nothing, here is an excerpt from our recent
@ps_polisci
article on how identity and positionality can affect fieldwork, especially for women and people of color who are often perceived as 'outsiders' even in home countries:
when those in power are complicit in creating and spreading falsehoods, countering them is a challenging prospect.
my piece on misinformation in india for
@washingtonpost
:
I'm not too much of a comparative politics guy, but interesting that India inflation (unlike in many countries) has been normal by India standards and Modi (unlike many struggling incumbents) is projected for a huge reelection victory.
opened the canadian visa website today and was reminded that my application to attend
@APSAtweets
2022 in montreal -- TWO APSAS AGO -- is still pending.
such an unfair burden on certain people and how this is sustainable is beyond me
on April 21 in banswara, rajasthan, Modi gave his now infamous rally speech where he called muslim voters "infiltrators" and peddled a number of anti-muslim tropes.
today the BJP lost that seat by over 15 percentage points (2.4 lakh votes).
excited to head back to chicago for
#mpsa2023
!
presenting new work on misinformation and violence in india and pakistan w/
@SimonChauchard
and
@NiloSiddiqui
if you’re around let’s grab a coffee or drink! :)
government tweets out that everyone over 18 can register to get a vaccine starting today. government forgets to change portal to allow for registration.
had the chance to speak at length to
@RohanV
about my research on misinformation in india: why do people believe fake news? does fact-checking work? what can we do about the problem? read below 👇🏽
On the Political FIx Q&A, I speak to
@KhariBiskut
about her recent research on tackling misinformation and how much we understand the mechanics of the problem.
Just published on APSR First View: "Misinformation and Support for Vigilantism: An Experiment in India and Pakistan" by Sumitra Badrinathan, Simon Chauchard, and Niloufer Siddiqui.
i have long covid. climbing up a flight of stairs makes me feel like i ran a 5k. can’t focus on work without feeling like i have a concussion. heart palpitations every other night mean no sleep.
life is not the same anymore.
Hi my name is Charlie and
#LongCovid
has destroyed my life. Today is two years.
Before my 'mild infection' I was a healthy fit 30 year old biking 10 miles a day. Now I can't work or leave the house. I still can't breathe right. It‘s a nightmare.
Here are my 4 questions:
It’s been one whole semester since I took a class where the prof told us to “screenshot the graph made in R and paste it into MS Paint to crop”. I still think about this everyday.
#rstats
straight from
#ica22
to nuffield college,
@simonchauchard
presents fascinating joint work w/
@pavithra_suri
on status loss and preferences for redistribution in india
govt / academia collaborations are so important to make sure experiments are generalizable and can be rolled out “in the wild”
huge thanks to
@Rahulkumar_IAS
and
@brlps_jeevika
for enabling this- never imagined i would get here when i started working on misinfo during my phd :)
.
@brlps_jeevika
&
@uc3m
signed a MOU to implement "Bihar Information & Media Literacy Initiative" -An Educative Intervention in Community Library & Career Development Center, to study the effectiveness of information & media literacy intervention with 12000+ learners.
Do watch this brilliant response by
@_YogendraYadav
when the Anchor said "BJP itself is more than the entire INDIA block put together, What do you have to say about that".
excited to be in australia for
#ica2024
! 🦘 🌊
presenting new work estimating the causal effects of a long term media literacy RCT on misinformation outcomes
tomorrow 9am Star L3- hope to see you there!
i’m going to need 3 business days to recover from this. sorry to everyone i owe an email response to.
Wordle 243 X/6
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meta’s spokespeople retweeting folks associated w the hindu nationalist movement to push back against claims that they favor the indian govt is….not the slam dunk they think it is
this chapter (w/ D. Kapur) was one of the first ever pieces of writing i produced as a phd student. so glad to finally see this book out with
@CambridgeUP
! huge thanks to
@NeelanjanSircar
and Sanjoy Chakravorty for making it happen.
order from amazon or
@bahrisons_books
☺️
thanks to funding from
@ssrc_org
’s mercury project, we can undertake a dream project of sorts: a year long, large scale RCT to combat health misinformation in india. an abstract of our project is below! (with
@SimonChauchard
and
@NeelanjanSircar
)
chatted with
@yangyang_zhou
and
@alan_jacobs1
about my research on misinformation, india, and the challenge of being fed too many cups of tea while on fieldwork. thanks for having me
@scopeconditions
and tune in below!
📢 New ep!
We're bombarded with (political)
#misinfo
on social media. How can we learn to tell truth from lies?
@KhariBiskut
tells us about her experiments in India 🇮🇳 that give voters tools to check
#misinfo
on Whatsapp. Do they work?
Listen here:
A new paper seeks to find an answer to a critical question — if misinformation can lead to vigilante violence, then “can reducing the credibility of rumours via corrections decrease support for vigilante violence?
@samzsays
writes.
very excited about attending my first ever
#epsa2023
@europsa
! spending a few days hiking in the lake district before heading up north.
if you’re going to be in glasgow, let’s catch up!
grateful to
@DSI_Democracy
and the beautiful city of zurich for allowing us the chance to present research in person for the first time in almost 2 years 🥺
My first political discussions ever were with my grandfather, who always taught me to reject bigotry, hate, and marginalization.
He couldn’t vote today, so this one is for him.
I owe so many people for making this project possible, but in particular I want to thank
@guygrossman
,
@m_levendusky
,
@mieuque
and Devesh Kapur, without whom this paper would not have made it this far.
full draft here:
5/5
Nothing in this election season surprises me anymore. If you told me that Mike Pence gave up his American citizenship to come to India and contest on a BJP ticket, I’d be like yeah, that makes absolute sense.
Anecdotal narratives say that Indian Americans are more liberal in the US and less so in India. We find support for this in our data. For a similar set of policies, Indian Americans have more liberal opinions on issues in America and more conservative opinions on issues in India:
Excited to share that our third report on Indian Americans is out today! (w/ Devesh Kapur,
@MilanV
,
@_JonathanKay
)
We look at the social realities of Indian Americans, including questions on identity, belonging, and social distance 👇
my
#apsa2024
highlight was returning to
@fergiesphilly
for live band karaoke w/ a packed polisci crowd to do one of my favorite songs ever. philly never misses, until next time ♥️
now that it’s official I can share!
I’m moving to DC and joining
@AU_SIS
as an Assistant Professor in the dept. of politics, governance and econ in Fall 24! ☺️
SO excited to join a vibrant community with brilliant colleagues, and v thankful to everyone who made it possible. 🙏🏽
super cool to have visited oslo and presented new work at
#GlobalFact9
on cross-country comparisons of whether labeling works against misinfo. paper to come soon! :)