Working papers

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

Abstract: Do peers influence individuals’ involvement in political activism? To provide a quantitative answer, I study Argentina’s abortion rights debate through Twitter, the social media platform. Pro-choice and pro-life activists coexisted online, and the evidence suggests peer groups were not too polarized. I develop a model of strategic interactions in a network allowing for heterogeneous peer effects. Next, I estimate peer effects and test whether online activism exhibits strategic substitutability or complementarity. I create a novel panel dataset where links and actions are observable by combining tweets’ and users’ information. I provide a reduced-form analysis by proposing a network-based instrumental variable. The results indicate strategic complementarity in online activism, both from aligned and opposing peers. Notably, the evidence suggests homophily in the formation of Twitter’s network, but it does not support the hypothesis of an echo-chamber effect.

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

Work in progress

Hate in the Tropics: Bolsonaro’s Triumph and the Surge of Online Hate Speech in Brazil

with D. Marino Fages.
Status: draft in progress.

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 online hate speech. Leveraging Twitter data from 2017 to 2019, we employ Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to detect hate speech in tweets. We propose a difference-in-differences framework to identify the effect of Bolsonaro’s triumph on hate speech, relying on the election result as an information shock. Our findings reveal a significant increase in hate speech via Twitter after the election, especially in municipalities with relatively low support for Bolsonaro. Similar patterns emerge from our individual-level analysis, suggesting that both the intensive and extensive margins of hate speech contributed to the overall increase. We interpret these results through a belief-updating mechanism, emphasizing the process of revising social norms that determine (un)acceptable public discourse. This interpretation is reinforced by the differential impact of the election based on the targets of hate speech. While we find no differential effect on political hate, we observe a significant effect in homophobia, racism, and sexism - areas in which Bolsonaro’s rhetoric may be controversial.

Silence in social networks

Status: draft in progress.

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.