How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
Guess, A. M., Malhotra, N., Pan, J., Barberá, P., Allcott, H., Brown, T., ... & Tucker, J. A. (2023). How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?. Science, 381(6656), 398-404.
Abstract
We investigated the effects of Facebook’s and Instagram’s feed algorithms during the 2020 US election. We assigned a sample of consenting users to reverse-chronologically-ordered feeds instead of the default algorithms. Moving users out of algorithmic feeds substantially decreased the time they spent on the platforms and their activity. The chronological feed also affected exposure to content: The amount of political and untrustworthy content they saw increased on both platforms, the amount of content classified as uncivil or containing slur words they saw decreased on Facebook, and the amount of content from moderate friends and sources with ideologically mixed audiences they saw increased on Facebook. Despite these substantial changes in users’ on-platform experience, the chronological feed did not significantly alter levels of issue polarization, affective polarization, political knowledge, or other key attitudes during the 3-month study period.
Core Takeaway
Chronological feed changed content
reduced both cross and similar ideology content, but more similar ideology content (hence, the traditional algorithms have an echo chamber effect)
more moderate content
Increased share of content from designated untrustworthy sources
Reduced exposure to uncivil content
Chronological feed reduced platform participation
Chronological feed did not found to reduce polarization or change political engagement (except using platform based metrics)
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