Mastodawn

Emily Thorson Jul 27, 2023

New at Nature: Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06297-w
Our key findings:
-Median Facebook user gets 50.4% of content from like-minded sources
-But reducing exposure by 1/3 for 3 months had no measurable effect on attitudes

Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing - Nature

A large-scale field intervention experiment on 23,377 US Facebook users during the 2020 presidential election shows that reducing exposure to content from like-minded social media sources has no measurable effect on political polarization or other political attitudes and beliefs.

Nature

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Brendan Nyhan Jul 27, 2023

Full tweet thread summarizing our findings here https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1684631397443489793?s=20

Brendan Nyhan (@Brendan.J.Nyhan on 🧵🧵🧵) on Twitter

“New @nature: Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing https://t.co/SRLyGB50Fa (open access!) Our key findings: -Median FB user gets 50.4% of content from like-minded sources -But reducing exposure by ~1/3 for 3 months had no measurable effect on attitudes”

Twitter

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Old Fucking Punk Jul 28, 2023

I'm not sure this study showed anything. By its own admission, Facebook might not have been a large enough influencer vs. outside sources. I think a valid study would have to isolate the participants.

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[monkaW intensifies]Aug 25, 2023

@brendannyhan Reducing exposure should have been done in 2015/2016, when Trump was getting all that free media on TV, radio etc. I mean he did call all Mexicans thiefs and rapists in his first speech after the Escalator™ Descent with a bunch of people he paid 50 bucks to attend.