Using Social Media to Change Gender Norms : An Experiment within Facebook Messenger in India

This paper experimentally tests the effectiveness of two short edutainment campaigns (under 25minutes) delivered through Facebook Messenger at reshaping gender norms and reducing social acceptability of violenceagainst women in India. Participants were randomly assigned to watch video clips with implicit or explicit messagingformats (respectively a humorous fake reality television drama or a docuseries with clear calls to action). After oneweek, the intent-to-treat effects of the implicit format on knowledge, gender norms, and acceptability of violenceagainst women oscillated between 0.16 and 0.21 standard deviations yet impacts diminished after four months. Bycontrast, the explicit format was more impactful in the short term in increasing willingness to share video clipswith friends and promoting online information-seeking behaviors. In the medium term, individuals who were exposedto the docuseries were 91 percent (7.5 percentage points) more likely to add a frame against violence against women intheir Facebook profile picture, a public display of their disapproval of this harmful practice. The general lack ofheterogeneous effects across social status indicators suggests social media as a potential medium for reachingdifferent online populations, including vulnerable ones.