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Instrumental variable (IV) methods offer a valuable approach to account for outcome data missing not-at-random. A valid missing data instrument is a measured factor which (i) predicts the nonresponse process and (ii) is independent of the…
Instrumental variable (IV) strategies are widely used in political science to establish causal relationships. However, the identifying assumptions required by an IV design are demanding, and it remains challenging for researchers to assess…
We conduct a field experiment on a movie-recommendation platform to investigate whether and how online recommendations influence consumption choices. Using a within-subjects design, our experiment measures the causal effect of…
Stack Overflow incentive system awards users with reputation scores to ensure quality. The decentralized nature of the forum may make the incentive system prone to manipulation. This paper offers, for the first time, a comprehensive study…
Portraying emotion and trustworthiness is known to increase the appeal of video content. However, the causal relationship between these signals and online user engagement is not well understood. This limited understanding is partly due to a…
As a major source for information on virtually any topic, Wikipedia serves an important role in public dissemination and consumption of knowledge. As a result, it presents tremendous potential for people to promulgate their own points of…
Social media influence online activity by recommending to users content strongly correlated with what they have preferred in the past. In this way they constrain users within filter bubbles that strongly limit their exposure to new or…
Platforms for online civic participation rely heavily on methods for condensing thousands of comments into a relevant handful, based on whether participants agree or disagree with them. These methods should guarantee fair representation of…
Accurately estimating how users respond to moderation interventions is paramount for developing effective and user-centred moderation strategies. However, this requires a clear understanding of which user characteristics are associated with…
As online reviews increasingly drive consumer decisions, the impact of review interface design on rating authenticity remains under-explored. This research investigates how evaluation sequence ("Rating-First" vs. "Review-First") influences…
Polarization is a troubling phenomenon that can lead to societal divisions and hurt the democratic process. It is therefore important to develop methods to reduce it. We propose an algorithmic solution to the problem of reducing…
Evaluating the causal effect of recommendations is an important objective because the causal effect on user interactions can directly leads to an increase in sales and user engagement. To select an optimal recommendation model, it is common…
Social media platforms face increasing scrutiny over the rapid spread of misinformation. In response, many have adopted community-based content moderation systems, including Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) on X (formerly Twitter),…
We consider two-alternative elections where voters' preferences depend on a state variable that is not directly observable. Each voter receives a private signal that is correlated to the state variable. Voters may be "contingent" with…
Online social networks provide a medium for citizens to form opinions on different societal issues, and a forum for public discussion. They also expose users to viral content, such as breaking news articles. In this paper, we study the…
Recommendation systems have been integrated into the majority of large online systems to filter and rank information according to user profiles. It thus influences the way users interact with the system and, as a consequence, bias the…
Online social media are key platforms for the public to discuss political issues. As a result, researchers have used data from these platforms to analyze public opinions and forecast election results. Recent studies reveal the existence of…
When people buy products online, they primarily base their decisions on the recommendations of others given in online reviews. The current work analyzed these online reviews by sentiment analysis and used the extracted sentiments as…
Traditional media outlets are known to report political news in a biased way, potentially affecting the political beliefs of the audience and even altering their voting behaviors. Many researchers focus on automatically detecting and…
Observational studies can play a useful role in assessing the comparative effectiveness of competing treatments. In a clinical trial the randomization of participants to treatment and control groups generally results in well-balanced groups…