Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
Do social influencers affect election outcomes? Social influencers can reach millions of people through social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. However, research on social influencers is scarce and so far largely limited to marketing research. I argue that social influencers can influence elections through their role as digital opinion leaders and their power to shape the media agenda. Empirically, I will leverage an event that occurred during the 2019 European election campaign. Eight days before the 2019 EP election, the German social influencer Rezo published a video in which he severely attacks the governing party that was watched by over 11.5 million users until the election. I will identify the causal effect of this video on the election outcome by relying on a differences-in-differences design. The results of this study have major implications for our understanding of the relationship between social media, electoral competition and political representation.
