Dialogue with Professor Ekaterina Zhuraskaya

“We have the situation in which any mistake, simple scandal, or deliberate wrong doing is immediately very visible to the public because everybody basically is in the spotlight all the time. This is true for both democracies and autocracies” – Prof Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

Prof Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics and EHESS recently wrote a paper, ‘3G Internet and Confidence in the Government’. Her research found that the expansion of 3G mobile network was a key driver of social media growth that has impacted the political landscape. UBS Chief China Economist, Dr Tao Wang led an in-depth conversation during the recent UBS Expert Dialogue series with Prof Zhuravskaya on the role of internet and media in shaping politics and political economy around the globe.

Ｗe’ve seen that the penetration of broadband internet access has grown tremendously, and this is true both in developed and developing worlds. In the developed world, it started 10 years ago at about 10% penetration and reached over 100% (because some people have several subscriptions). In developing countries, it’s grown from almost zero to about half of the population.

Prof Zhuravskaya drew attention to the social media business model of attracting and keeping attention of users. Social media platforms earn money on advertising, so they really want to have users stay as much as possible on the platforms. However, as humans are hardwired to have a psychological bias in reacting to more negative news, this is often achieved through feeding users with more inflammatory content.

How do countries deal with false information spreading through social channels? An experiment conducted in 2019 showed that increasing the number of clicks required to share content reduces sharing. Imposing mandatory fact-checking also reduces the spread of false information. To learn more about Prof Zhuravskaya’s work and her involvement in the UBS Women in Economics initiative, check out here