November 14, 2024

Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Christopher A. Baila & others

Author: Juan José Calderón Amador
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“Social Media can provide a conversational extension to a B2B company’s nurturing programs. Social Media gives us the opportunity to humanize our communications and make our companies more approachable.”

Ardath Albee, CEO of marketinginteractions.com

“You as a brand have to be completely confident about your position, because you will get criticism. You will have a negative reaction. If you didn’t get a negative reaction, that means you’re standing neutral and you have no point of view. Who wants to participate in that?”

Frank Cooper, Pepsico

“Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you.”

Guy Kawasaki, alltop.com

Hoy traemos a este espacio este artículo titulado: “Exposure to opposing views on social media can
increase political polarization. ” de
Christopher A. Baila,1, Lisa P. Argyleb, Taylor W. Browna, John P. Bumpusa, Haohan Chenc, M. B. Fallin Hunzakerd, Jaemin Leea, Marcus Manna, Friedolin Merhouta, and Alexander Volfovskye del PNAS September 11, 2018 115 (37) 9216-9221; first published August 28, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804840115

Edited by Peter S. Bearman, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved August 9, 2018 (received for review March 20, 2018)

SIGNIFICANCE

Social media sites are often blamed for exacerbating political polarization by creating “echo chambers” that prevent people from being exposed to information that contradicts their preexisting beliefs. We conducted a field experiment that offered a large group of Democrats and Republicans financial compensation to follow bots that retweeted messages by elected officials and opinion leaders with opposing political views. Republican participants expressed substantially more conservative views after following a liberal Twitter bot, whereas Democrats’ attitudes became slightly more liberal after following a conservative Twitter bot—although this effect was not statistically significant. Despite several limitations, this study has important implications for the emerging field of computational social science and ongoing efforts to reduce political polarization online.

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.

political polarization | computational social science | social networks | social media | sociology

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 Fuente: [ slideshare vía ]