We invite you to a FAIR Seminar with Luca Braghieri. Luca is an Assistant Professor in the department of Decision Sciences at Bocconi University. Most of his work is on topics related to applied microeconomics, behavioral economics, and political economy.
Title: Behavioral and Information Frictions in News Consumption: Evidence from Social Media
Abstract: We conducted a large-scale field experiment on Facebook to identify behavioral and information frictions in news consumption, and to test interventions aimed at improving the reliability and moderating the slant of users’ news portfolios on the platform. We find that both types of frictions are pervasive. News-following behavior on Facebook is shaped by inertia and passivity in the face of minor “hassle costs” (behavioral frictions). Furthermore, although participants exhibit a broad understanding of the ideological slant of news outlets, they systematically misperceive their reliability (information frictions). To address these barriers, we implement a two-pronged intervention: a user-friendly, platform-integrated interface that enables participants to easily re-optimize the set of news pages they follow, and personalized information about the slant and reliability of both individual outlets and users’ overall portfolios. Our results show that re-optimization alone leads users to moderate their news portfolios on Facebook, while pairing re-optimization with information significantly improves portfolio reliability. These changes move users closer to their self-reported ideal news diets and translate into measurable shifts in off-platform news consumption. Taken together, the findings highlight the potential for simple, scalable interventions to shape online news diets in a way that benefits users and has positive externalities on society.