2. Experiment 1: The impact of five low-contrast, verified, targeted messages on opinions and voting preferences
In our first experiment, we used a simulated Twitter feed to determine whether low-contrast, verified, targeted tweets could be used to shift the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters. The appearance of these tweets closely matched that of the TMs the Twitter company currently sends to its users: (a) Our 5 TMs had a white background, just as our 30 organic tweets did. (b) The brief headline before the textual content read “Breaking News” in a black font. (c) The blue checkmark (signifying that Twitter had somehow “verified” the source of the tweet) was present on each TM, just as it is, at this writing, on all Twitter TMs (