Working papers

Raise your voice! Activism and peer effects in online social networks

New draft coming soon! (RedNIE Working Paper)

Abstract: Do peers influence individuals’ involvement in political activism? Are peers like or opposite-minded? Does this distinction matter for understanding peer influence in activism? To provide quantitative answers to these questions, I study Argentina’s abortion rights debate through Twitter. Pro-choice and pro-life activists coexisted online, and the evidence suggests peer groups were not fully polarized. I propose a model of heterogeneous peer effects in a network and empirically test the strategic nature of activism. The results indicate that online activism exhibits strategic complementarity from like and opposite-minded peers. Notably, the evidence suggests strong homophily in the formation of Twitter’s network, but it does not fully support the hypothesis of an echo-chamber effect. While some individuals are segregated in online chambers, others are not. Moreover, peer estimates do not vary across these groups, emphasizing the absence of an echo effect.

Media: uc3nomics (English); Nada es Gratis (Spanish).

Hate in the Tropics: Political Leaders and the Social Acceptability of Online Hate Speech (PDF)

with D. Marino Fages.

Abstract: How does the advent of political information influence social norms and individual behavior? This paper examines the impact of Bolsonaro’s victory in the 2018 Brazilian presidential election on the prevalence of hate speech. Using over 37.6 million tweets from 2017 to 2019, we apply natural language processing techniques to identify hate speech in tweets. We exploit the election outcome as an unexpected information shock and implement difference-in-differences designs to estimate its causal effect. Our findings reveal a substantial increase in online hate speech following the election, particularly in municipalities where Bolsonaro received less electoral support, and primarily driven by the extensive margin. Classifying hate speech by target, we find that the increase is concentrated in homophobic and sexist content—areas in which Bolsonaro’s rhetoric was highly controversial. These patterns are consistent with a belief-updating mechanism, suggesting that the election outcome reshaped perceptions of the social acceptability of expressing hate.

Selected work-in-progress

Silence in social networks

In short: How do social interactions affect what we publicly say and what we do not? I study a model of social norms, assuming interactions are structured through a network. Individuals choose whether to conform to a social norm – have a speech – or not – stay silent. Social norms may be controversial, and their compliance is observable. Then, individuals may remain silent (i) if no norm aligns with their preferences or (ii) if they do not want to conform to a social norm different from their friends, i.e., by social pressure. I investigate how the network structure and distribution of preferences regarding social norms affect the equilibrium outcome and under which circumstances the social pressure mechanism arises.

The long memory of poverty: the Historical Unsatisfied Basic Needs in Argentina

with E. Nicolini. Pre-doctoral work.