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Using Social Media to Guard the Ballots: Evidence From a Facebook Campaign To Monitor Elections

Last registered on September 06, 2019
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Using Social Media to Guard the Ballots: Evidence From a Facebook Campaign To Monitor Elections
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004678
Initial registration date
September 05, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 06, 2019, 1:47 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Colombia
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Juan Mateo Montenegro Zarama
Affiliation
MIT
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Natalia Garbiras-Diaz
PI Affiliation
U.C. Berkeley
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2019-09-02
End date
2019-12-31
Keywords
Electoral, Governance
Additional Keywords
Corruption, Electoral misdeeds
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
In this project we plan to use a field experiment that exposes citizens to a large-scale Facebook advertisement campaign encouraging them to report electoral misdeeds around the 2019 Colombian elections. Our experimental design will allow us to study four separate questions: (1) whether their exists a demand for online reporting tools; (2) whether candidates reduce their electoral misdeeds when informed about these types of campaigns; (3) if candidates engage in \textit{signal jamming} of the reporting website strategically; (4) if this type of campaigns induce secondary effects on citizens' voting decisions by increasing the salience of electoral misdeeds.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Garbiras-Diaz, Natalia and Juan Mateo Montenegro Zarama. 2019. "Using Social Media to Guard the Ballots: Evidence From a Facebook Campaign To Monitor Elections." AEA RCT Registry. September 06. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4678-2.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We randomize approximately 700 Colombian municipalities into two conditions:

T0 - Placebo control group: Municipalities in this group receive a Facebook ad containing a placebo message, reminding people about the 2019 local elections.
T1 - Ad treatment group: Municipalities in this group receive a Facebook ad containing a message encouraging them to report electoral misdeeds through a link sending them to a reporting website, along with the placebo message.

The ad campaigns will last for a week and are aimed to reach at least half of the Facebook users in the municipalities in the sample.

We then cross-randomized the municipalities receiving the ads into three conditions:

- TA. Politician awareness treatment without signal jamming: All of the candidates running for Mayor and their campaign staff in the municipalities in this group will be informed about the monitoring campaign, but they will not be informed about the particular reporting website advertised in the campaign.
- TB. Politician awareness treatment allowing for signal jamming: All of the candidates running for Mayor and their campaign staff in the municipalities in this group will be informed about the monitoring campaign, including the particular reporting website advertised in the campaign.
- TC. No Politician awareness: None of the candidates running for Mayor and their campaign staff in the municipalities in this group will not be informed about the monitoring campaign in any way.
Intervention Start Date
2019-09-02
Intervention End Date
2019-11-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
- Reports about electoral misdeeds filed from each municipality
- Occurrence of different types of electoral misdeeds measured through survey responses
- Electoral outcomes such as turnout, and vote shares
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The most common historical types of electoral misdeeds will be measured and also which candidate was engaged in these misdeeds.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
- Campaigning activities of candidates
- Trust in different types of institutions
- Interpersonal trust
- Protest and collective action in municipalities
- Interpersonal trust
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
See the above section describing the intervention.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Stratified randomization within bins defined by percentiles of the main outcomes. Randomization is done using statistical software
Randomization Unit
Municipalities
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
698
Sample size: planned number of observations
40000
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
225 control, 473 in T1, 157 in TA, 155 in TB, 161 in TC.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The minimum detectable effects are 0.25 standard deviations for reports and a pooled variable of electoral misdeeds and 0.28 standard deviations for voter turnout.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
MIT's Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects
IRB Approval Date
2019-05-16
IRB Approval Number
1904805455
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
December 14, 2019, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
August 30, 2021, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
698
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
698 municipalities
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
Placebo control: 225 FB message + No Letter to politicians: 161 FB message + Letter to politicians: 312
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
Yes
Public Data URL
https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/160921/version/V1/view

Program Files

Program Files
Yes
Program Files URL
https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/160921/version/V1/view
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
Can information and communication technologies help citizens monitor their elections? We analyze a large-scale field experiment designed to answer this question in Colombia. We leveraged Facebook advertisements sent to over 4 million potential voters to encourage citizen reporting of electoral irregularities. We also cross-randomized whether candidates were informed about the campaign in a subset of municipalities. Total reports, and evidence-backed ones, experienced a large increase. Across a wide array of measures, electoral irregularities decreased. Finally, the reporting campaign reduced the vote share of candidates dependent on irregularities. This light-touch intervention is more cost-effective than monitoring efforts traditionally used by policymakers.
Citation
Garbiras-Díaz, Natalia, and Mateo Montenegro. 2022. "All Eyes on Them: A Field Experiment on Citizen Oversight and Electoral Integrity." American Economic Review, 112 (8): 2631-68
URL
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20210778

Reports & Other Materials