Insegnamento a.a. 2024-2025

Theory: “Rational” models and Behavioral economics 

1.     Network effects and network models

2.     Two-sided markets

3.     Quality provision 

4.     Advertising

5.     Persuasion

6.     Social image concerns

Empirics

1 Content production

·       Incentivizing content creation 

·       Spillovers to content (e.g., news) outside social media 

·       Deterring harmful content: misinformation and hate speech

2 Content distribution through algorithms

·       How segregated is online news consumption? 

·       Value of social media advertising 

·       Consumer data and privacy 

·       Political advertising 

3  Content consumption

·       Consumer welfare 

·       Effects on mental health 

·       Effects on polarization and violence 

·       Political effects

4    Using social media as data 

5    Comparison to traditional media 

6    Running experiments on social media 

7    Getting and handling social media data

·       Recognize the basic models that explain behavior on social media (of both users and platforms), combining “rational” approaches and behavioral economics.

·       Distinguish the different stages of the creation of user-generated content and how they affect individuals and society as a whole.

·       Describe the differences and similarities between social media and traditional media.

·       State the types of data provided by social media and the types of experiments or quasi experiments that can be conducted in this setting. 

·       Explain some of the most relevant policy questions regarding social media.

·       Analyze the academic literature. Evaluate an individual academic article and synthesize findings across different articles.

·       Examine the important information from an article and present it.

·       Evaluate “folk wisdom” arguments and popular policies proposed to address challenges posed by social media. 

·       Assess the market failures that underlie the key problems of social media, and formulate potential solutions. 

• Lectures
• Practical Exercises
• Collaborative Works / Assignments
• Interaction/Gamification

The learning experience of this course includes face-to-face lectures by the instructors.

The instructor will additionally provide some coding examples and practical exercises to practice how to obtain and manipulate social media data.

In addition, students are also asked to prepare one group presentation on 1) a research paper, 2) a public policy proposal, or 3) a startup idea. 

These presentations are used to introduce students to the critical evaluation of empirical research and to solidify the concepts learned in class. Further, the presentations are intended to stimulate discussions about solutions to pressing questions related to social media. This will allow the students to develop their own ideas about future social-media related projects, whatever their future path is.

With the purpose of measuring the acquisition of the above-mentioned learning outcomes, the students’ assessment is based on two main components:

1. Team presentation (50% of the final grade) aimed to test the students’ ability to synthesize and evaluate the academic literature and communicate their analysis. Students can present a summary and evaluation of an existing research article or can present a new research design or a public policy/startup proposal. In the case of presenting a research article, students will be asked to critically assess its methodology. In the case of a public policy/startup proposal, students will be asked to analyze which market failure is being address and to discuss strengths and weakenesses in light of empirical evidence from existing research. The grade will be a combination of a grade assigned by the instructor and a grade assigned by their peers. More details about assessment criteria will be made available in Blackboard.
2. Written exam (50% of the final grade), consisting of multiple-choice and open questions aimed to assess students’ ability to apply the tools illustrated during the course. The exam will also include short statements to discuss, aimed to assess students’ ability to articulate economic reasoning and to evaluate the potential effects of a given business practice/policy action.

Students’ assessment will be based on the written exam with the same content and weight distribution of that applied to attending students.

• Aridor, G., Jiménez-Durán, R., Levy, R. E., & Song, L. (Forthcoming). "The Economics of Social Media." Journal of Economic Literature
• More research articles that will be indicated or uploaded to the Blackboard platforms