Intervention (Hidden)
A first component focuses on individual behavior among at-risk youth. In this case, the source of variation is randomized. A sample of 1200 participants will be recruited from at-risk youth from the three most violent municipalities in the Department of Guatemala: Ciudad de Guatemala, Mixco and Villa Nueva. Participants will be recruited for the participation in a nation-wide media campaign. Participants will be randomly allocated to one of the following groups:
1. Give voice (T1). These participants will be invited to attend a meeting in which an individual video will be recorded for the inclusion in the media campaign. The participant will be given the opportunity to record his vision for the future of Guatemala and what he would like to improve in the city. The video will not be included in the nation-wide media campaign.
2. Give voice and share the voice (T2). These participants will be invited to attend a meeting in which an individual video will be recorded for the inclusion in the media campaign. The participant will be given the opportunity to record his vision for the future of Guatemala and what he would like to improve in the city. The video will be edited and will be included in the nation-wide media campaign. A team of media experts from working with UNDP’s Ciudades Conectadas Foundation, will support the research team in editing the material into a media material that can be shared on different channels (including electronic billboards in the city of Guatemala, metro-bus lines, radio, tv and social media). The media campaign will last for one year, and its focus aims at being impactful and safe to share. The media team will frame the T1 and T2 interventions in order to avoid messages that could be in direct confrontation with gangs.
3. Control group (T0). Participants in this group will not be selected for any activity.
Comparing T0, T1 and T2 will allow researchers to disentangle the effects of media exposure to a pure empowerment effect. In addition, within group T1 and T2, we will cross-randomize two types of content in the expression of the participant. One content related to self-presentation, which highlights the personal side of the participant, and one content related to community vision, which highlights the public side of the message. This will provide additional evidence on which content is more effective in reducing violent attitudes and increase individuals’ sense of belonging.
A second component focuses on overall violence by exploiting exposition to the media campaign created in the first component. The campaign is designed to reach a large number of individuals through broadcast on radio, electronic billboards, and social media. This component makes use of administrative data about homicides and exploits two sources of variation to identify the effect of exposure to the media campaign on violence. A first source of variation exploits semi-random exposure to the media campaign from radio and television using topography-corrected coverage as Enikolopov and Petrova (2011), Yanagizawa-Drott (2014), Olken (2009), Adena, et al. (2015), Della Vigna, et al. (2014), and Armand, Atwell and Gomes (2019).
Researchers will make use of the micro-targeting feature of Facebook paid content to randomly target different geographical areas of the country, therefore providing exogenous variation in exposure to the media campaign. In Guatemala, this social media platform is used by most youths. Using Guatemala’s age structure from the Central Intelligence Agency (2019) and Facebook (2019) data on users’ demographic profile, researchers estimate penetration in the 18-24 demographic between 73 and 85 percent.