Research

Working Papers

Brainrot? The Effect of Short-Form Content on Long-Form Attention Link Coming Soon!

  • Best Poster Winner, RES 2026
  • Presented at Kings QPE 2026, Warwick PhD Conference 2026, RES 2026, KCL PPE Conference 2026

Has the rise of short-form content worsened our attention spans? I assess this question by studying slice-by-slice attention to news videos on YouTube, the leading global source of video content. Leveraging the staggered rollout of YouTube Shorts across markets and channels, I find that the introduction of short-form content significantly worsens user attention to their usual videos. Skipping to any given section of a video increases by approximately 30%, with across video comparisons showing that longer videos are worst affected. The effect is fast-acting and permanent. On the supply side I find no evidence that channels modify the content of their videos, but instead increasingly produce their own short-form content. Disaggregating this skipping within videos, I find a uniform increase to all slices except for the final 5% of a video. I rationalise these results with a model in which videos are not discrete units but a collection of interdependent slices. Skipping allows users to trade off context for additional video content, with shorts exposure lowering the value of context and leading to content-seeking behaviour. Structural estimation reveals that viewers value context 15% less relative to content in response. Mechanism tests suggest these results are driven by a worsening attention span, rather than substitution or user composition. Overall, short-form content has large impacts on user behaviour.

Can Hate Speech Be Banned Online? The Effects of Shutting Down Toxic Forums on Reddit with Lily Shevchenko (Latest Version) (Working Paper)

  • Presented at NICEP 2025, Warwick PhD Conference 2025, HEC PhD Conference 2025, KCL PPE Conference 2025, CODE @ MIT 2025, LSE-Warwick PolEcon PhD 2026, Doctorissimes 2026, AYEW Political Economy 2026, EAYE 2026, South West Economics PhD Conference 2026, POLECON UK 2026, CESifo Workshop on Digital Platforms 2026, RES 2026,

Is deplatforming effective in reducing toxicity on social media? To answer this question we study a policy change on Reddit in June 2020 which led to a simultaneous ban of thousands of forums containing hateful content, but not the users of these forums. We use data on the near universe of comments left on Reddit to examine the impact of the ban on user behaviour in a differences-in-differences design. We find that the most active users of banned subreddits comment more after the policy change and substitute to new forums in the weeks after the ban. The increase in activity persists in the long run, but is not associated with higher toxicity: instead, the comments left by affected users outside banned subreddits contain 20% fewer instances of hate speech. We do not find evidence that the policy leads to lower quality of engagement, negative spillover effects or recreation of banned subreddits elsewhere on the platform. Overall, the results suggest that moderation targeting toxic digital spaces can be effective in combating hate speech without lowering user engagement, and thus can be aligned with platforms’ incentives.

Social Influence in Online Reviews: Evidence from the Steam Store (Latest Version) (Working Paper)

  • Winner of the Best Paper award of the Business and Industry Section of the Royal Statistical Society at NIE Conference 2024
  • Presented at CODE @ MIT 2024, RES 2025

How does social influence affect consumer ratings? Using a dataset from the popular Steam gaming platform I investigate how quality judgements depend on pre-existing consumer assessments. In 2019, Steam introduced a new review system which decreased the exposure of users to previous ratings. Firstly, I find that user ratings are dependent on average ratings. The result is not due to selection, and is robust to a range of alternative specifications. Secondly, the effect is heavily asymmetric: individual reviewers are more negative when exposed to a lower average rating, but do not respond to a higher one. I rationalize these results with a model of reviewer behavior. Finally, using owner data, I estimate a structural model of game choice. A 1% increase in rating is equivalent to a 2 dollar price reduction. This suggests social influence has large implications for buyers and sellers.