Episode description

Andy Guess studies how social media platforms shape people’s political views. He’s an assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Last summer, he was part of a big team that released four papers on their analyses and experiments in social media all at the same time. The research was in collaboration with Meta, the company responsible for Facebook and Instagram. 

Andy and the team were able to dissect how often people on these platforms are exposed to political opinions, particularly from people whose opinions differ from their own. They were also able to conduct experiments on these platforms. By turning some of the knobs and levers, could they influence people’s engagement on these platforms and even change their political views?

The four big research papers that all came out together are:

• Guess et al. (2023, Science): How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
• Guess et al. (2023, Science): Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions
• Gonzalez-Bailon et al. (2023, Science): Asymmetric ideological segregation in exposure to political news on Facebook
• Nyhan et al. (2023, Nature): Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing

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