Using Social Media to Change Gender Norms : An Experiment Within Facebook Messenger in India

This paper experimentally tests the effectiveness of two short edutainment campaigns (under 25 minutes) delivered through Facebook Messenger at reshaping gender norms and reducing social acceptability of violence against women (VAW) in India. Participants were randomly assigned to watch video-clips with implicit or explicit messaging formats (respectively a humorous fake reality TV drama or a docu-series with clear calls to action). After one week, intent-to-treat effects of the implicit format on knowledge, gender norms, and acceptability of VAW oscillated between 0.16 and 0.21 standard deviations yet impacts diminished after four months. On other hand, the explicit format was more impactful in the short-term in increasing willingness to share video-clips with friends and promoting online information-seeking behaviors; and in the medium-term, individuals exposed to the docu-series were 91% (7.5 p.p.) more likely to add a frame against VAW in their Facebook profile picture, a public display of their disapproval of this harmful practice. The general lack of heterogeneous effects across social status indicators suggest social media as a potential medium for reaching different online populations, including vulnerable ones