Experiment 3: VMPs by compliance level.

The internet has made possible a number of powerful new forms of influence, some of which are invisible to users and leave no paper trails, which makes them especially problematic. Some of these effects are also controlled almost exclusively by a small number of multinational tech monopolies, which means that, for all practical purposes, these effects cannot be counteracted. In this paper, we introduce and quantify an effect we call the Targeted Messaging Effect (TME)–the differential impact of sending a consequential message, such as a link to a damning news story about a political candidate, to members of just one demographic group, such as a group of undecided voters. A targeted message of this sort might be difficult to detect, and, if it had a significant impact on recipients, it could undermine the integrity of the free-and-fair election. We quantify TME in a series of four randomized, controlled, counterbalanced, double-blind experiments with a total of 2,133 eligible US voters. Participants were first given basic information about two candidates who ran for prime minister of Australia in 2019 (this, to assure that our participants were “undecided”). Then they were instructed to search a set of informational tweets on a Twitter simulator to determine which candidate was stronger on a given issue; on balance, these tweets favored neither candidate. In some conditions, however, tweets were occasionally interrupted by targeted messages (TMs)–news alerts from Twitter itself–with some alerts saying that one of the candidates had just been charged with a crime or had been nominated for a prestigious award. In TM groups, opinions shifted significantly toward the candidate favored by the TMs, and voting preferences shifted by as much as 87%, with only 2.1% of participants in the TM groups aware that they had been viewing biased content.

互联网催生了多种极具影响力的新型舆论影响形式，其中部分形式对用户而言难以察觉且未留下任何可追溯的书面记录，这使其问题性尤为突出。此类影响中有不少几乎完全由少数跨国科技垄断企业掌控，这意味着在实际操作层面，此类影响几乎无法被抵消。本研究中，我们介绍并量化了一种我们称之为定向消息效应（Targeted Messaging Effect, TME）的现象——即向单一特定人口群体（例如一群未决选民）发送具有重要影响的消息（如指向某政治候选人的负面新闻报道链接）所产生的差异化影响。这类定向消息往往难以被察觉，若其对接收者造成显著影响，可能会破坏自由公平选举的公正性。我们通过四项随机、对照、平衡、双盲的系列实验对定向消息效应进行量化，总计纳入2133名符合资格的美国选民。实验伊始，我们向参与者提供2019年澳大利亚总理竞选中两位候选人的基本信息（以此确保参与者处于“未决投票”状态）。随后，要求参与者在推特（Twitter）模拟器中浏览一系列信息推文，以判断哪位候选人在特定议题上更具优势；总体而言，这些推文对两位候选人并无偏向。但在部分实验条件下，推文会偶尔被定向消息（Targeted Messages, TMs）打断——此类消息为推特官方推送的新闻提醒，部分提醒内容宣称某候选人刚刚被指控犯罪，或获得了某项极具声望的奖项。在定向消息组中，参与者的态度显著向定向消息所偏向的候选人倾斜，投票偏好的偏移幅度最高可达87%，且定向消息组中仅有2.1%的参与者意识到自己曾浏览过带有偏向性的内容。