Social Media and Job Market Success: A Field Experiment on Twitter by Prof Yan Chen (Michigan)

Social Media and Job Market Success: A Field Experiment on Twitter

Abstract

To examine the impact of social media promotion of job market papers on job outcomes, we conduct a field experiment on Twitter (now X). Specifically, we examine how having a prominent economist quote-tweet a job market paper in the field of economics impacts paper visibility and candidate job market outcomes. Our results show that papers assigned to be quote-tweeted in our experiment receive 442% more views and 303% more likes than those assigned to the control condition. We further find that those in the quote-tweet treatment receive one additional flyout and that the women in the treatment group receive 0.9 more job offers. These findings suggest that social media promotion can improve the visibility and success of job market candidates, especially for underrepresented groups in economics such as women.

About the speaker

Yan Chen is the Daniel Kahneman Collegiate Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She also holds an appointment as a research professor with the U-M Institute for Social Research. Her research interests are in behavioral and experimental economics, market design, and the economics of information technology. She has served in various editorial positions, including an Advisory Editor at Games and Economic Behavior (2013-2020) and a Department Editor (Behavioral Economics and Decision Analysis) at Management Science (2018-2022). She was the president (2015-17) of the Economic Science Association.