Social media makes your tiny corner feel like the whole world. That illusion is reshaping our politics.
Social Media and Anti-Social Pluralism - Aaron Ross Powell
Communities are different online and off, and pluralism that thrives in the real world can turn toxic in the digital world.
People Across the Globe Increasingly Say Social Media Is Harming Democracy
Most think social media leads to manipulation and division, but they also say it informs people and gives them a voice in politics.
Do social media threaten democracy?
Facebook, Google and Twitter were supposed to save politics as good information drove out prejudice and falsehood. Something has gone very wrong
Social Media Effects: Hijacking Democracy and Civility in Civic Engagement
Perceived as an equalizing force for disenfranchised individuals without a voice, the importance of social networks as agents of change cannot be ignored. However, in some societies, social networks have evolved into a platform for fake news and propaganda, empowering disruptive voices, ideologies, and messages. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google hold the potential to alter civic engagement, thus essentially hijacking democracy, by influencing individuals toward a particular way of thinking.
Improving social media for democratic discourse
Social media have expanded opportunities for communication and political participation, but today's dominant platforms are optimized primarily for engagement and advertising revenue, contributing...
Bias, Skew, and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity
U.S. political discourse seems to have fissioned into discrete bubbles, each reflecting its own distorted image of the world. Many blame machine-learning algorithms that purportedly maximize “engagement”—serving up content that keeps YouTube or Facebook users watching videos or scrolling through their feeds—for radicalizing users or strengthening their partisanship. Sociologist Shoshana Zuboff15 even argues that “surveillance capitalism” uses optimized algorithmic feedback for “automated behavioral modification” at scale, writing the “music” that users then “dance” to.
Bias, Skew, and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity
U.S. political discourse seems to have fissioned into discrete bubbles, each reflecting its own distorted image of the world. Many blame machine-learning algorithms that purportedly maximize “engagement”—serving up content that keeps YouTube or Facebook users watching videos or scrolling through their feeds—for radicalizing users or strengthening their partisanship. Sociologist Shoshana Zuboff15 even argues that “surveillance capitalism” uses optimized algorithmic feedback for “automated behavioral modification” at scale, writing the “music” that users then “dance” to.
Social Media Algorithms Distort Social Instincts and Fuel Misinformation - Neuroscience News
Social media algorithms, designed to boost user engagement for advertising revenue, amplify the biases inherent in human social learning processes, leading to misinformation and polarization.
The limits of social media as a source of political information during routine and crisis times across 17 countries
Recent studies on political knowledge suggest people learn little about political events and societal issues from social media. Potentially, social media are a more effective source of information ...
Social media is a gnarly coordination problem we need to decompose - a warm space
Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020-2024: Decline,...
Using nationally representative data from the 2020 and 2024 American National Election Studies (ANES), this paper traces how the U.S. social media landscape has shifted across platforms,...
Do people learn about politics on social media? A meta-analysis of 76 studies
Abstract. Citizens turn increasingly to social media to get their political information. However, it is currently unclear whether using these platforms act
How Social Media Brings Out the Worst in Us
A new book argues that social media does more harm than good and we might be happier and healthier using it less.
Free Our Feeds
Social media is broken: controlled by a handful of billionaires who shape what people see, say, and believe. These platforms profit from division, exploit user data, and lock people into closed systems.
Leaflet, Blogging, and How to Fix Social Media - Aaron Ross Powell
Decentralization, network overlap, and why we should all blog, too.
Is social media truly making us more politically polarized, or does it simply over-represent our most extreme opinions? In our new preprint, @small-schulz.bsky.social and I present *punishing evidence* that social media systematically overrepresents users’ most extreme political opinions. 1/n
