Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences· 2018Q1
Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization
- 1,806citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2018year
Short summary
Republicans exposed to liberal views on Twitter became more conservative, contrary to the expectation that exposure to opposing views would reduce polarization.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Republicans who followed a liberal Twitter bot for one month became substantially more conservative.
- Democrats who followed a conservative Twitter bot showed a slight, non-statistically significant increase in liberal attitudes.
- The study surveyed Democrats and Republicans who use Twitter at least three times weekly.
- Respondents were randomly assigned to follow a bot exposing them to opposing political ideologies for one month.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
There is mounting concern that social media sites contribute to political polarization by creating "echo chambers" that insulate people from opposing views about current events. We surveyed a large sample of Democrats and Republicans who visit Twitter at least three times each week about a range of social policy issues. One week later, we randomly assigned respondents to a treatment condition in which they were offered financial incentives to follow a Twitter bot for 1 month that exposed them to messages from those with opposing political ideologies (e.g., elected officials, opinion leaders, media organizations, and nonprofit groups). Respondents were resurveyed at the end of the month to measure the effect of this treatment, and at regular intervals throughout the study period to monitor treatment compliance. We find that Republicans who followed a liberal Twitter bot became substantially more conservative posttreatment. Democrats exhibited slight increases in liberal attitudes after following a conservative Twitter bot, although these effects are not statistically significant. Notwithstanding important limitations of our study, these findings have significant implications for the interdisciplinary literature on political polarization and the emerging field of computational social science.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018 · DOI ↗
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Field: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Statistical and Nonlinear PhysicsPhysics and Astronomy