A presentation by Melissa Sands (Assistant Professor of Politics and Data Science at the London School of Economics).
Social media has emerged as an important venue for individuals to experience reminders of rising economic inequality. Due to high levels of economic segregation, sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are among the few settings where those who have less can see what life is like for those who have much more. We study the effects of digital exposure to inequality in a placebo-controlled randomized field experiment that randomly assigns college students to follow the Instagram account of a fellow student enjoying a luxury vacation over Spring Break. We find that this digital exposure to extreme wealth lowers individuals' perceptions of their place in the socioeconomic hierarchy of their school, consistent with upward social comparison. Treated individuals also express more negative affect toward the rich. Meanwhile, the treatment decreases willingness to take political action in favour of a tax on large inheritances, an effect that is driven by non-white participants. Beliefs about societal-level inequality and support for raising taxes on high income are unaffected. Taken together, the findings suggest that while encounters with the rich on social media have the potential to change beliefs and attitudes, this effect is potentially bounded by characteristics of the particular social media content that may limit the scale of social comparisons.
