Do Political Actors Engage in Strategic Deception on Social Media?

Simon Ricketts
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Simon Ricketts: Monash University

Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers from Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers

Abstract: We examine whether political actors engage in strategic deception on social media. We find evidence that certain groups of politicians engage in deception in response to an election. To infer deception, we construct a novel wealth inference model from text of political social media accounts. We use machine learning and natural language processing, which is accurate to within half an order of magnitude when compared to real wealth disclosures as required by law in the United States. Wealth exaggeration is not homogenous ; in an election year, the wealthiest political actors minimise their perceived wealth, while the poorest exaggerate their perceived wealth. We do not find evidence that there are differences in exaggeration due to sex, party or experience.

Keywords: Strategic deception; wealth-inference; machine-learning; natural language processing; social media; election JEL Classification: C55; D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cdm, nep-cmp and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:wrkesp:16

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