Ventura, T., Majumdar, R., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. (2025). Misinformation beyond traditional feeds: Evidence from a WhatsApp deactivation experiment in Brazil. The Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1086/737172
Summary
This paper uses a field experiment in Brazil to estimate the causal political effects of WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging platform that dominates political communication in much of the Global South. Conducted around a Brazilian electoral period, the study induced participants to deactivate WhatsApp and compared their political knowledge, beliefs, and misinformation exposure against control users. The central argument is that messaging platforms operate differently from feed-based social media, and that understanding contemporary misinformation ecosystems requires moving beyond the public-facing feeds of Facebook and Twitter into private, encrypted spaces.
Key Contributions
- Provides experimental causal evidence on the political effects of a major encrypted messaging platform, extending a literature that has focused predominantly on Facebook and Twitter.
- Expands the empirical scope of misinformation research to private, non-feed-based platforms.
- Offers evidence from Brazil, a key non-U.S. context where WhatsApp is central to political communication, contributing to debates about platform effects in the Global South.
Methods
- Field experiment employing a WhatsApp deactivation design, in which participants were induced to stop using the platform for a defined period.
- Situated in Brazil, likely around an electoral period, with comparisons between treated (deactivated) and control users.
- Outcomes measured include political knowledge, political beliefs, and exposure to misinformation.
Findings
- The study reports causal effects of WhatsApp deactivation on users’ information environments and political attitudes in Brazil (specific magnitudes not available from the abstract alone).
- Deactivation shows measurable consequences for misinformation exposure and political belief, supporting the claim that encrypted messaging platforms play a distinct informational role.
Connections
This deactivation study sits alongside comparable platform-effects experiments such as Allcott2025-jb, while its Brazilian, WhatsApp-centered focus connects to other work on messaging platforms and non-U.S. information disorder like Kansaon2025-id and Pierri2025-hm. It shares an author with Ventura2026-yc, likely part of the same research program on political information environments in Brazil.