News consumed via social media correlates with more polarization than direct browsing
Evidence
It depends: regular non-curated browsing does not provide the same perverse incentives as social media. A key study that looked at the browsing activity of about 50,000 active US news readers (which culminated in over 2 billion page views) directly compared how polarized users were when they accessed content via social media versus direct browsing activity. This study confirmed that news content accessed via social media and search engines is associated with greater polarization. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 466
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- Polarization arises from social media access, not from people’s own content choices (similarity 0.95)
- Social media let confirmation bias drive news consumption, undercutting paid mainstream outlets (similarity 0.87)
- Quitting social media for a month causally reduces political polarization (similarity 0.85)
- Most people do not actively seek out polarizing content when browsing freely (similarity 0.84)
- Randomized trials show pausing social media reduces political polarization (similarity 0.82)
- Individual choice shapes news exposure more than algorithmic filtering does (similarity 0.81)
- Social media changed misinformation’s speed, reach, and social context (similarity 0.80)
- Media profit incentives over truth drove audiences toward social media (similarity 0.80)
- Believing all media are biased pushes people toward sources biased in their favor. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Social media amplifies rather than causes pre-existing biases in susceptible users
#qualifies(0.75) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 414