This paper develops a theoretical model to study the economic incentives for a social media platform to moderate user-generated content. We show that a self-interested platform can use content moderation as an effective marketing tool to expand its installed user base, to increase the utility of its users, and to achieve its positioning as a moderate or extreme content platform.…Read More
A significant challenge that online social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter face today is acting as the custodians of the Internet while at the same time being the center of self-expression and user-generated content.…Read More
Identifying whether newspaper editors focus on what is newsworthy or what is trendy when choosing stories is important for the design of media regulation. This column shows how the popularity of an article, reflected by online clicks, influences the coverage of the story.…Read More
This study aims to measure the impact of General Data Protection Regulations on firms and consumers. Specifically, we plan to document GDPR’s impact on consumers search and discovery of products, and firm’s ability to reach out and sell to a broad set of consumers.…Read More
Advances in intelligent technologies change the way consumers search and shop for products. Emerging is the trend of home-shopping devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home, which allow consumers to search or order products using voice commands.…Read More
We study how to optimally structure such consumer communities when the objective is to maximize the total or average amount of effort expended. …Read More
Studying factors that influence adoption of new products and technologies lies at the heart of marketing. In this paper, we study a manager’s decision to adopt automation for a production process.…Read More
We aim to test if investment in branding – specifically investment in advertising – improves a firms’ outcomes in the labor markets. A…Read More
Social media platforms now start largely relying on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to automatically detect and remove UGC believed to be harmful.…Read More
In today’s connected world, individuals are no longer mere consumers of goods, information and services, but public producers of often valuable data. In fact, personal data is becoming such a core input that The Economist called it “the world’s most valuable resource” ahead of oil.…Read More
In this proposal, we argue that support of populism can be explained by the interaction between individual economic and social experiences and aggregate economic shocks. We test empirically if personal experiences, information environment, and their interaction with aggregate economic shocks shape people’s political decisions. …Read More
Many companies create and manage communities where consumers observe and exchange information about the effort expended by other consumers. Such communities are especially popular in the areas of fitness, education, dieting, and financial savings. …Read More
How do social interactions shape collective action, and how are they mediated by the availability of networked information technologies? To answer these questions, we study the Temperance Crusade, one of the earliest instances of organized political mobilization by women in the U.S. …Read More
If you’ve ever thought that the quest for more clicks is affecting the sorts of articles that get published in the media, Wharton marketing professor Pinar Yildirim wants you to know that you’re right. But it’s not quite the overarching impact that you might expect. …Read More
In crowdsourcing contests, choices about contest structure affect both number and quality of entries. Funded Researcher Pinar Yildrim shares knowledge about how firms can get their ideal results by manipulating contest structure.…Read More
