Events

Abstract: Political leaders increasingly use social media to speak directly to voters, but the extent to which elite cues shape offline behavior remains unclear. In this article, we study the effects of elite cues on non-compliant behavior, focusing on a series of controversial tweets sent by US President Donald Trump calling for the “liberation” of Minnesota, Virginia and Michigan from state and local government COVID-19 restrictions. Leveraging the fact that Trump’s messages exclusively referred to three specific US states, we adopt a generalized difference-in-differences design relying on spatial variation to identify the

causal effects of the targeted cues. Our analysis shows that the President’s messages led to an increase in movement, a decrease in adherence to stay-at-home restrictions, and an increase in arrests of white Americans for crimes related to civil disobedience and rebellion. These findings demonstrate the consequences of elite cues in polarized environments.

The Political Science Seminar Series is convened by Rachel Bernhard and Tarik Abou-Chadi. For more information on this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact politics.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.