Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17647
Authors: Karsten Mueller; Carlo Schwarz
Abstract: We study whether social media can amplify anti-minority sentiments with a focus on Donald Trump's political rise. Using an instrumental variable strategy based on Twitter's early adopters at the South by Southwest festival in 2007, we find that higher Twitter use in a county is associated with a sizeable increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes after the 2016 presidential primaries. Trump's tweets about Muslims predict increases in xenophobic tweets by his followers, cable news mentions of Muslims, and hate crimes on the following days. These results suggest that social media content can affect real-life outcomes.
Keywords: social media; trump; hate crime
JEL Codes: L82
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Trump's tweets about Muslims (Z12) | xenophobic tweets (F22) |
| Trump's tweets about Muslims (Z12) | media mentions of Muslims (Z12) |
| Trump's tweets about Muslims (Z12) | hate crimes (K42) |
| Twitter usage (Z13) | hate crimes (K42) |
| Twitter usage (Z13) | antimuslim hate crimes (J15) |
| Twitter usage (Z13) | hate crimes targeting Hispanics (J15) |