IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/wrkesp/16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Political Actors Engage in Strategic Deception on Social Media?

Author

Listed:
  • Ricketts, Simon

    (Monash University)

Abstract

We examine whether political actors engage in strategic deception on social media. We find evidence that certain groups of politicians engage in deception in response to an election. To infer deception, we construct a novel wealth inference model from text of political social media accounts. We use machine learning and natural language processing, which is accurate to within half an order of magnitude when compared to real wealth disclosures as required by law in the United States. Wealth exaggeration is not homogenous ; in an election year, the wealthiest political actors minimise their perceived wealth, while the poorest exaggerate their perceived wealth. We do not find evidence that there are differences in exaggeration due to sex, party or experience.

Suggested Citation

  • Ricketts, Simon, 2021. "Do Political Actors Engage in Strategic Deception on Social Media?," Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers 16, Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:wrk:wrkesp:16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/wmesp/manage/16_-_simon_ricketts.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Strategic deception ; wealth-inference ; machine-learning ; natural language processing ; social media ; election JEL Classification: C55 ; D72;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C55 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wrk:wrkesp:16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Margaret Nash (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.