Zachary O'Keeffe | University of Michigan (original) (raw)

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Papers by Zachary O'Keeffe

Vaccine, Nov 1, 2020

Objectives: To assess the quantity and type of vaccine-related information Americans consume onli... more Objectives: To assess the quantity and type of vaccine-related information Americans consume online and its relationship to social media use and attitudes toward vaccines. Methods: Analysis of individual-level web browsing data linked with survey responses from representative samples of Americans collected between October 2016 and February 2019. Results: We estimate that approximately 84% of Americans visit a vaccine-related webpage each year. Encounters with vaccine-skeptical content are less frequent; they make up only 7.5% of vaccine-related pageviews and are encountered by only 18.5% of people annually. However, these pages are more likely to be published by untrustworthy sources. Moreover, skeptical content exposure is more common among people with less favorable vaccine attitudes. Finally, usage of online intermediaries is frequently linked to vaccine-related information exposure. Google use is differentially associated with subsequent exposure to non-skeptical content, whereas exposure to vaccine-skeptical webpages is associated with usage of webmail and, to a lesser extent, Facebook. Conclusions: Online exposure to vaccine-skeptical content is relatively rare, but vigilance is required given the potential for exposure among vulnerable audiences.

Nature Human Behaviour, Sep 25, 2017

Governments employ police to prevent criminal acts. But it remains in dispute whether high rates ... more Governments employ police to prevent criminal acts. But it remains in dispute whether high rates of police stops, criminal summonses and aggressive low-level arrests reduce serious crime 1-7. Police officers target their efforts at areas where crime is anticipated and/or where they expect enforcement will be most effective. Simultaneously, citizens decide to comply with the law or commit crime partly on the basis of police deployment and enforcement strategies. In other words, policing and crime are endogenous to unobservable strategic interaction, which frustrates causal analysis. Here, we resolve these challenges and present evidence that proactive policing-which involves systematic and aggressive enforcement of low-level violations-is positively related to reports of major crime. We examine a political shock that caused the New York Police Department (NYPD) to effectively halt proactive policing in late 2014 and early 2015. Analysing several years of unique data obtained from the NYPD, we find that civilian complaints of major crimes (such as burglary, felony assault and grand larceny) decreased during and shortly after sharp reductions in proactive policing. The results challenge prevailing scholarship as well as conventional wisdom on authority and legal compliance, as they imply that aggressively enforcing minor legal statutes incites more severe criminal acts. In the last few decades, proactive policing has become a centrepiece of 'new policing' strategies across the globe 8,9. The logic, commonly associated with the broader theory of order maintenance policing (OMP; also known as broken windows), is that rather than wait for citizens to report criminal conduct, law enforcement should proactively patrol communities, maintaining order through systematic and aggressive low-level policing 1,10,11. According to proponents, increasing police stops, quality-of-life summonses, and low-level arrests deters more serious criminal activity by signalling that the area is being monitored and that deviance will not be tolerated 12,13. As a corollary, following a phenomenon termed the Ferguson effect, disengaging from proactive policing emboldens criminals, precipitating spikes in serious crime 14. But while elected officials commonly justify proactive policing by pointing to the enforcement of legal statutes, the strategy's efficacy continues to be debated 5,15,16. A serious concern is that proactive policing diverts finite resources and attention away from investigative units, including detectives working to track down serial offenders and break up criminal networks 8,17. Proactive policing also disrupts communal life, which can drain social control of group-level violence 18. Citizens are arrested, unauthorized markets are disrupted, and people lose their jobs, all of which create more localized stress on individuals already living on the edge 19,20. Such strains are imposed directly through proactive policing, and thus are independent from subsequent judgments of guilt or innocence 21. Inconsistency in aggressive low-level policing across community

This contains the replication code and data for the paper "The sources and correlates of exp... more This contains the replication code and data for the paper "The sources and correlates of exposure to vaccine-related (mis)information online".

Policy Research Working Papers, 2017

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Vaccine, Nov 1, 2020

Objectives: To assess the quantity and type of vaccine-related information Americans consume onli... more Objectives: To assess the quantity and type of vaccine-related information Americans consume online and its relationship to social media use and attitudes toward vaccines. Methods: Analysis of individual-level web browsing data linked with survey responses from representative samples of Americans collected between October 2016 and February 2019. Results: We estimate that approximately 84% of Americans visit a vaccine-related webpage each year. Encounters with vaccine-skeptical content are less frequent; they make up only 7.5% of vaccine-related pageviews and are encountered by only 18.5% of people annually. However, these pages are more likely to be published by untrustworthy sources. Moreover, skeptical content exposure is more common among people with less favorable vaccine attitudes. Finally, usage of online intermediaries is frequently linked to vaccine-related information exposure. Google use is differentially associated with subsequent exposure to non-skeptical content, whereas exposure to vaccine-skeptical webpages is associated with usage of webmail and, to a lesser extent, Facebook. Conclusions: Online exposure to vaccine-skeptical content is relatively rare, but vigilance is required given the potential for exposure among vulnerable audiences.

Nature Human Behaviour, Sep 25, 2017

Governments employ police to prevent criminal acts. But it remains in dispute whether high rates ... more Governments employ police to prevent criminal acts. But it remains in dispute whether high rates of police stops, criminal summonses and aggressive low-level arrests reduce serious crime 1-7. Police officers target their efforts at areas where crime is anticipated and/or where they expect enforcement will be most effective. Simultaneously, citizens decide to comply with the law or commit crime partly on the basis of police deployment and enforcement strategies. In other words, policing and crime are endogenous to unobservable strategic interaction, which frustrates causal analysis. Here, we resolve these challenges and present evidence that proactive policing-which involves systematic and aggressive enforcement of low-level violations-is positively related to reports of major crime. We examine a political shock that caused the New York Police Department (NYPD) to effectively halt proactive policing in late 2014 and early 2015. Analysing several years of unique data obtained from the NYPD, we find that civilian complaints of major crimes (such as burglary, felony assault and grand larceny) decreased during and shortly after sharp reductions in proactive policing. The results challenge prevailing scholarship as well as conventional wisdom on authority and legal compliance, as they imply that aggressively enforcing minor legal statutes incites more severe criminal acts. In the last few decades, proactive policing has become a centrepiece of 'new policing' strategies across the globe 8,9. The logic, commonly associated with the broader theory of order maintenance policing (OMP; also known as broken windows), is that rather than wait for citizens to report criminal conduct, law enforcement should proactively patrol communities, maintaining order through systematic and aggressive low-level policing 1,10,11. According to proponents, increasing police stops, quality-of-life summonses, and low-level arrests deters more serious criminal activity by signalling that the area is being monitored and that deviance will not be tolerated 12,13. As a corollary, following a phenomenon termed the Ferguson effect, disengaging from proactive policing emboldens criminals, precipitating spikes in serious crime 14. But while elected officials commonly justify proactive policing by pointing to the enforcement of legal statutes, the strategy's efficacy continues to be debated 5,15,16. A serious concern is that proactive policing diverts finite resources and attention away from investigative units, including detectives working to track down serial offenders and break up criminal networks 8,17. Proactive policing also disrupts communal life, which can drain social control of group-level violence 18. Citizens are arrested, unauthorized markets are disrupted, and people lose their jobs, all of which create more localized stress on individuals already living on the edge 19,20. Such strains are imposed directly through proactive policing, and thus are independent from subsequent judgments of guilt or innocence 21. Inconsistency in aggressive low-level policing across community

This contains the replication code and data for the paper "The sources and correlates of exp... more This contains the replication code and data for the paper "The sources and correlates of exposure to vaccine-related (mis)information online".

Policy Research Working Papers, 2017

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.