| Popis: |
Acts of vigilante violence, most often targeted against religious and sectarian minorities, have become increasingly common in India and Pakistan in recent years. Journalistic accounts often link anti-minority vigilantism to misinformation on social media, leading politicians and activists to call on tech platforms to deal with such false information. Yet, empirically, the precise link between misinformation and support for vigilante violence remains largely unidentified. In this paper we fill this gap by asking what role, if any, misinformation plays in support for vigilantism. On the one hand, false information with a call to action could directly result in collective violence, especially in contexts where such information is readily believed. On the other hand, citizens could be motivated to engage in violence as a result of long-standing societal cleavages, with misinformation playing little to no causal role. To answer these questions we designed a jointly registered conjoint experiment in India and Pakistan using a novel audio medium treatment. Through realistic vignette scenarios describing vigilante acts in response to social media rumors, we manipulate corrections to misinformation, state positionality, and elite messaging and measure whether these variables affect support for vigilante violence. |
