Publications by Author: Benjamin Schneer

We demonstrate that exposure to the news media causes Americans to take public stands on specific issues, join national policy conversations, and express themselves publicly—all key components of democratic politics—more often than they would otherwise. After recruiting 48 mostly small media outlets, we chose groups of these outlets to write and publish articles on subjects we approved, on dates we randomly assigned. We estimated the causal effect on proximal measures, such as website pageviews and Twitter discussion of the articles’ specific subjects, and distal ones, such as national Twitter conversation in broad policy areas. Our intervention increased discussion in each broad policy area by approximately 62.7% (relative to a day’s volume), accounting for 13,166 additional posts over the treatment week, with similar effects across population subgroups. 

On the Science website: Abstract, Reprint, Full text, and a comment (by Matthew Gentzkow) "Small media, big impact".

This is a poster presentation describing (1) the largest ever experimental study of media effects, with more than 50 cooperating traditional media sites, normally unavailable web site analytics, the text of hundreds of thousands of news articles, and tens of millions of social media posts, and (2) a design we used in preparation that attempts to anticipate experimental outcomes