Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions

Author:

Guess Andrew M.1ORCID,Malhotra Neil2ORCID,Pan Jennifer3ORCID,Barberá Pablo4ORCID,Allcott Hunt5,Brown Taylor4ORCID,Crespo-Tenorio Adriana4,Dimmery Drew46ORCID,Freelon Deen7ORCID,Gentzkow Matthew8ORCID,González-Bailón Sandra9ORCID,Kennedy Edward10ORCID,Kim Young Mie11ORCID,Lazer David12ORCID,Moehler Devra4ORCID,Nyhan Brendan13ORCID,Rivera Carlos Velasco4,Settle Jaime14ORCID,Thomas Daniel Robert4,Thorson Emily15ORCID,Tromble Rebekah16ORCID,Wilkins Arjun4,Wojcieszak Magdalena1718ORCID,Xiong Beixian4,de Jonge Chad Kiewiet4,Franco Annie4,Mason Winter4ORCID,Stroud Natalie Jomini19ORCID,Tucker Joshua A.20ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Department of Politics and School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.

2. Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

3. Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

4. Meta, Menlo Park, CA, USA, CA, USA.

5. Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

6. Research Network Data Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

7. UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

8. Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

9. Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

10. Department of Statistics and Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

11. School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.

12. Network Science Institute, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.

13. Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA.

14. Department of Government, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA.

15. Department of Political Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA.

16. School of Media and Public Affairs and Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.

17. Department of Communication, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.

18. Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

19. Moody College of Communication and Center for Media Engagement, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.

20. Wilf Family Department of Politics and Center for Social Media and Politics, New York University, New York, NY, USA.

Abstract

We studied the effects of exposure to reshared content on Facebook during the 2020 US election by assigning a random set of consenting, US-based users to feeds that did not contain any reshares over a 3-month period. We find that removing reshared content substantially decreases the amount of political news, including content from untrustworthy sources, to which users are exposed; decreases overall clicks and reactions; and reduces partisan news clicks. Further, we observe that removing reshared content produces clear decreases in news knowledge within the sample, although there is some uncertainty about how this would generalize to all users. Contrary to expectations, the treatment does not significantly affect political polarization or any measure of individual-level political attitudes.

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Reference59 articles.

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3. J. Ugander B. Karrer L. Backstrom C. Marlow The Anatomy of the Facebook Social Graph. arXiv:1111.4503 [cs.SI] (2011).

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5. The spread of true and false news online

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