Sociology Faculty Awarded Interdisciplinary Research Grant to Examine "Social Polls" and Misinformation

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A team of six researchers from UMass Amherst, Sapienza University of Rome, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—including UMass Amherst sociology faculty members Jennifer Lundquist and Andrew Paik—have been awarded a $50,000 Interdisciplinary Research Grant (IRG) for their project on political misinformation and disinformation through social media biases.

The project is the first of its kind to assess this relationship between political misinformation and social media polls. The research team notes that preliminary results show that many social polls during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential election cycles could be "mistakenly perceived by the public as being representative [yet were] heavily biased and likely manipulated in favor of one candidate." There are serious consequences to unacknowledged demographic and partisan bias in such polls, "including promoting beliefs of voter fraud as an explanation for lost elections."

The team plans to analyze data from Twitter and Facebook to identify partisan and demographic biases at play in the poll responses; to test the potential for manipulating social polls through purchased votes; and to compare poll outcomes with FiveThirtyEight’s aggregated predictions, leading to greater understanding of election prediction methods using mainstream and social media polls.

The full research team consists of Przemek Grabowicz, CICS, UMass Amherst; Monideepa Tarafgar, Isenberg, UMass Amherst; Jennifer Lundquist, sociology, UMass Amherst; Anthony Paik, sociology, UMass Amherst; JungHwan Yang, communications, UIUC; and Mattia Samory, computer science, Sapienza University of Rome.

The Interdisciplinary Research Grants are offered by the UMass Amherst Office of the Provost in coordination with the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement. The goal of the program is to empower creativity, strengthen the campus’ areas of excellence, promote equitable collaborations, and attract external funding and other forms of recognition across our colleges and schools.

The IRG funding will facilitate the research required to apply for a larger grant from the National Science Foundation’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program.