Research | Mohamed Sabry Amer

Working Papers

1. Doing Online Fieldwork on Social Media Platforms in the Arab World: Challenges and Mitigating Strategies (Revised & Resubmitted to Middle East Law & Governance), with Asmaa Abdelkhalek, Mazen Hassan, Sarah Mansour & Zeyad Kelani.

   Abstract

   Much of political behavior is now taking place online, making it imperative for researchers to adapt data collection tools to the online sphere. In this paper, we identify and discuss twelve challenges of such research and propose techniques to address them. We generated and applied these techniques while running an online survey experiment on resisting fake news amongst users of Arabic-speaking X (formerly Twitter). First, we show how we used trending hashtags/keywords as the cursor to identify subjects and raise the concerns associated with such a technique. Second, we elaborate how we contacted users while navigating the different accounts’ settings on X and the restrictions imposed by social media platforms on messaging potential subjects. Third, we show how we paid subjects while preserving their anonymity. We contribute to the literature on social media analysis in the Arab world by addressing the technical and practical challenges when running experiments on actual social media leaders – whose inclusion as experimental subjects substantially increases external and ecological validity.

2. Can Individuals Be Inoculated against Fake News: An Experimental Study on a Sample of Egyptian Trend Engagers on X, with Mazen Hassan, Asmaa Abdelkhalek, Sarah Mansour & Zeyad Kelani.

   • Presented at the Oxford CSAE Conference 2026.
   • Accepted for presentation at the Economic Research Forum (ERF) 2026.
   • Presented at the 10th Social Science and Humanities Conference at the Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies 2025.
   • Presented at the FEPS-AUC Joint Seminar in Political Science 2025.
   Abstract

   The spread of fake news has been shown to have alarming political and social consequences. In this paper, we examine whether providing a short training to social media users can help them resist fake news, measured by how far they believe them and their tendency to share them. Our design tests a hypothesis which assumes that individuals can be inoculated with mental antibodies against fake news – just as individuals get vaccinated against viruses. We test this hypothesis via an online experiment, conducted on Egyptian X users (formerly Twitter). We recruited our subjects from a sample of trend engagers who interacted with the top trending keywords/hashtags over two months, in addition to a booster sample of university students. The experiment entailed randomly assigning subjects into a control group, a treatment that trained them on scientific reasoning, and another that briefed them on the possibility of inflicting social harm when sharing fake news. The findings show that both treatments were effective in reducing the belief in fake news, whereas only the scientific treatment was effective in curbing the tendency to share such news. The paper contributes to the literature on resisting misinformation by testing the inoculation theory on actual X users; a traditionally under-researched sample.

In Progress

1. Jordanian Parliamentary Elections Data at the Precinct Level, 2013-2024, with Elizabeth Parker-Magyar (Dataset).